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Education Bill

I always find it very hard to agree with the Telegraph, so I have been having a terribly tough time over the last 15 minutes or so. Although I would say to the Telegraph and others, as they said of us, that they have brought it on themselves and that I have every sympathy for wanting to look after teachers, we have to produce legislation that is practical and that works. I cannot see how what we have in front of us works with Twitter, Facebook and the inevitable communication that there will be between parents and, particularly, pupils. You really cannot have a teacher hoicked out of school with these sort of allegations and not have it flying around on the net. The wording in front of us seems to seek to tackle this by criminalising the children and the parents who will be doing this. That is most unwise. The damage really only occurs when some newspaper picks up a story and eviscerates a teacher to entertain its readers. That is the evil; I do not believe that we should be trying to curb more than that.