The Department for Education is rushing to get police checks done on 25,000 people seeking work with children before the start of the new term.

Amid concerns about the safety of children following the murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, extra staff are being taken on to rush through the Criminal Records Bureau checks before 4 September.

Because of the backlog at the bureau, schools have been employing classroom staff after checking they are not on the official blacklists of unsuitable people - but without checking police records.

Now the department wants both parts of the checking process to be done first.

The Education Minister, Margaret Hodge, said: "There's no danger anyone will be starting working in any schools without having gone through those checks."

But a head teachers' leader says people might have been put at risk.

New system faltered

The department advises that checks should be made on all people, including volunteers, seeking positions which will bring them into contact with children.

Before March this year the system involved a school or education authority asking the department whether someone was on its List 99 - and the Department of Health's similar blacklist - and asking their local police force for a criminal record check.

The CRB's failure to get up steam, to work from day one ... has potentially put people at risk

Head teachers' leader David Hart

But police checks could take weeks - so with List 99 clearance and good references, people were free to start work while the police check was being processed.

Then in March the Home Office's long-delayed new Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) began work, operated by private consultants Capita.

It was supposed to provide a quick, "one-stop shop" for both checks.

Its introduction coincided with a tightening of the child protection rules which greatly widened the sort of jobs - paid and voluntary - requiring checking, to include people such as scout leaders and school governors.

By May it was clear the system was hopelessly overloaded.

Interim arrangement

Warnings came from teacher recruitment agencies that a huge backlog was building up and that schools might find themselves without staff.

The Department for Education then said they should revert to the old system as an "interim arrangement".

A letter sent to education authorities and teacher agencies made it clear this exemption applied only to teachers and teaching assistants.

It did not apply to contractors, ancillary staff such as caretakers, or school governors.

But a senior source at the department said the Education Secretary, Estelle Morris, had been worried about a "gap" in the system.

This is that List 99 records misconduct only on the part of teachers - including trainees - or other workers with children.

Sudden change

So someone coming fresh into such jobs might pose a risk and could even have a criminal conviction - but not be on the blacklist.

Only the fullest type of police check, which discloses all convictions and any allegations or suspicions, would reveal this.

So the department has now decided it wants anyone going into a classroom to have had the fullest level of police check before they begin work.

The Home Office said about 100 extra staff were being put onto the job, partly from elsewhere in the CRB and partly from the Passport Office, which is also based in Liverpool.

Checks in progress

A spokesperson said: "We have identified 22,000 applications that are education-related."

A "significant number" already had List 99 checks.

About 3,000 applications had only just been received.

As part of the speeding-up process, the forms for those whose checks had been completed were being sent to schools by courier.

Teachers appointed

The change was news to Select Education - one of the biggest suppliers of temporary teachers and classroom assistants.

"We haven't been officially notified," said marketing director David Rose.

"We welcome it because we fully supported the whole concept of the CRB and enhanced disclosure service anyway."

His company had not been happy with the interim arrangement, even though there had been only "a handful of issues" in the decade or so for which the old system had operated.

'Not good enough'

"Last term we did put teachers out to work and teaching assistants who had got List 99 approval, while the police checks came through."

A spokesman for the industry group the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, Dan Guthrie, said: "The department and the CRB knew what our understanding of it was and knew supply teachers were being placed under the interim arrangements.

"If they didn't intend that they should have stopped it because they knew that was happening."

The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, David Hart, said: "Our members have had to make job offers on the basis of inadequate information and that's not at all satisfactory.

"The CRB's failure to get up steam, to work from day one in a proper and efficient manner, has potentially put people at risk."