Parents were banned from attending an inter-school sports day to protect pupils from kidnappers and paedophiles. The host school said they could not prevent ‘unsavoury’ characters from sneaking in. More than 270 pupils from four local primaries took part in the East Beds School Sports Partnership Athletics Day at Sandy Upper School in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire last week. Youngsters aged seven and eight competed in the long jump, hurdles, sprint, 400 metres and relay races. Their parents, many of whom wanted to take time off work to attend, condemned the ban.
One mother, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘They said they just could not estimate how many parents were going to be there, and were worried that they couldn’t stop someone who shouldn’t be there from being there. But I think it’s just health and safety gone mad.’ Mother-of-three Emma Collett, 33, of Biggleswade, has a child at St Andrew’s Lower School in the town. She said: ‘I would have taken time off work to support my child. It would have meant a lot to me. I’m all for measures to protect the safety of children but lines must be drawn and common sense must prevail.’
Paul Blunt of the East Bedfordshire School Sports Partnership, which ran the event, said the ‘ultimate fear’ was that a child could be abducted. He said: ‘If we let parents into the school they would have been free to roam the grounds. All unsupervised adults must be kept away from children.’
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