Two weeks after decreeing that every new teacher and school worker had to be cleared in advance by the Criminal Records Bureau, Estelle Morris quietly announced that they could work at the head's discretion, following a single (List 99) check. List 99 is a secret register of suspected or known paedophiles.
This is after some students were sent home and there was chaos predicted if the DfES insisted on CRB checks. Morris's u-turn is breathtakingly cynical, calculated on the politics of the last tabloid headline.
After the arrests for the murders of the two girls, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, in Soham, the tabloids as well as their usual trailing of the need to "bring back hanging", were full of fury about dangerous people having access to schoolchildren. Ian Huntley was a school caretaker and Maxine Carr worked as a teaching assistant. Neither would have shown up on the CRB vetting. But the need to show "something is being done" is more important than awkward facts.
By the beginning of September, however, the tabloids were warning that children would be in much more danger if schools were closed because the vetting hadn't been carried out. The insistence on CRB checks was "political correctness gone mad". So Estelle Morris bowed to the new line and allowed teachers and school staff to work at the head's discretion.
This is political opportunism. It's "spin" gone mad. Never mind the truth, how will it play in the Mail?
It's almost certain that children are safer in school, even with unvetted teachers, than either on the streets or at home. Most child abuse is perpetrated by parents and in the home. Even child murder, which is very rare, is overwhelmingly committed by family members and associates. Vetting is only one element in a whole range of child protection measures.
And one thing that is hardly mentioned is how did the CRB mess up so badly? The CRB is a joint enterprise between the Home Office and a private contractor, Capita, set up in March to provide a central register of those considered unsuitable to work with children and vulnerable adults. It was unprepared for the numbers involved, with 22,000 new teachers and school staff unprocessed at the start of term.
Unprepared? Capita was responsible for the £200 million Individual Learning Accounts scheme, which was last year closed after widespread allegations of fraud. And the fiasco of Lambeth's housing benefits which earned it the name Crapita.
Crapita is worth about £1.9bn with 60% of its revenue coming from government contracts. It made £44m profits in the first six months of this year.
Yet again privatisation has been shown not to work. From the railways to nuclear energy, not only does privatisation compromise safety standards, it's stunningly inefficient even in business terms.
But because it's our lives, the government is forced to intervene. So when private companies fail, the public foots the bill, but when they succeed they keep the profits all for themselves. Not quite a level playing field.