No it is not April 1

My first reaction to this story in the Evening Standard was that somehow I and everyone else (including whoever is in charge of the weather, which is hot and sticky) have misread the calendar. Today is not July 7, anniversary of the London transport bombs but April 1. How else can one explain that a 14 year-old was arrested, kept in a police cell, had her fingerprints taken and generally treated as a criminal for saying that she did not want to work in a group with five pupils, four of whom spoke no English at all.

Codie was attending a GCSE science class at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, when the incident happened.

The teenager had not been in school the day before due to a hospital appointment and had missed the start of a project, so the teacher allocated her a group to sit with.
"She said I had to sit there with five Asian pupils," said Codie yesterday.

"Only one could speak English, so she had to tell that one what to do so she could explain in their language. Then she sat me with them and said 'Discuss'."

According to Codie, the five - four boys and a girl - then began talking in a language she didn't understand, thought to be Urdu, so she went to speak to the teacher.

"I said 'I'm not being funny, but can I change groups because I can't understand them?' But she started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police'."

Codie said she went outside to calm down where another teacher found her and, after speaking to her class teacher, put her in isolation for the rest of the day.

A complaint was made to a police officer based full-time at the school, and more than a week after the incident on September 26 she was taken to Swinton police station and placed under arrest.

"They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewellery, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken," said Codie. "It was awful."

After questioning on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offence, her mother Nicola says she was placed in a bare cell for three-and-a-half hours then released without charge.

I am not sure what I find more offensive: the teachers who seem unable to cope with the slightest problem without calling in the police, the school in general, which does not understand that putting children who speak next to no English together in one group so they never learn is a good idea or the police who clearly have no crimes to deal with in that area as they can waste their time and the taxpayers' money on this sort of thing. Of course, this is

the same local education authority where a ten-year-old boy was prosecuted earlier this year for calling a schoolfriend racist names in the playground, a move branded by a judge "political correctness gone mad."

Perhaps, Mr Gove would like to have a look at that educational authority.

By a curious coincidence I am half-way through a new book by Richard Gaunt about Sir Robert Peel, the man credited with reforming the legal system in the first half of the nineteenth century. One outcome of his reforms was that children were no longer abused in the name of the law or what was interpreted as law. It would appear that Sir Robert's work is being reversed by our educationalists and police.

UPDATE: A reader has pointed out to me that the story is a tad old and, indeed, I should have checked the date. Mea culpa. It will not happen again. As there are comments on it, I shall leave the story up and promise to blog a little more carefully in future. My excuse? A new kitten has joined the household.