Tens of thousands of college students may be unable to pursue their courses properly because of the vetting backlog at the Criminal Records Bureau.

Schools in England and Wales finally were able to begin the autumn term this week after the Education Secretary, Estelle Morris, relaxed her strict rules on background checks on new staff.

This eased the colleges' staffing problem too.

But police checks still have to be carried out on students who will be doing work placements with children or vulnerable adults - on teaching, sport or care-related courses.

The situation is critical because substantial work experience is integral to many vocational qualifications.

Advice

The Association of Colleges is furious because it has been warning the CRB there might be delays in getting the character checks done since January - before it went into operation.

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The association represents almost all general FE colleges, sixth form colleges and specialist colleges in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

One of its employment advisers, Judy Bennington, has been passing on official guidance to its members.

She said that, in a move to ease the situation, the regulator for nurseries and other childcare settings - the inspectorate Ofsted - had now said students can be taken on without their CRB clearances being completed, provided they are not left unsupervised.

And the Department for Education and Skills had said that trainee teachers could be placed provided it had checked them against List 99 - its database of people who are unsuitable to work with children.

Wary

But this seems to be open to interpretation.

At Dearne Valley College in South Yorkshire, assistant principal Sally Blunt said the college had anticipated two weeks ago that it was likely to have problems.

So it had written to all the centres it used for placements, asking if they would take unchecked students, given that they would be supervised anyway.

Some were fine with that - but Rotherham General Hospital, for example, had said no, as had a special school and the local day nursery.

"Obviously they would not have had that guidance from Ofsted," she said.

"But we are not sure whether we will end up not getting some of our students out."

Form-filling

The 75 new nursery nursing students are likely to be hit first, because they usually are placed within about six weeks of starting their courses and spend almost half the year out of college.

Making matters worse, the college says it is having to apply for checks on all students doing sport and leisure courses, just in case they end up being placed in a school - even though those going into leisure centres, for example, will not need the same vetting.

Part of the association's advice to colleges is to make telephone applications to the CRB, not paper-based ones.

One of the CRB's main excuses for the problems it has had coping with demand is the relatively high level of forms it has had to deal with.

Need help

It says many have errors or omissions which have to be referred back - whereas they could be dealt with straight away if the applicant were phoning

Sally Blunt said that might work for an experienced teacher - but not for an unworldly 16 year old.

So the college had to put staff resources into helping them complete paper application forms.

Even if the youngsters did telephone the CRB to apply for a check they would need to have gone over everything first with someone in the college.

"What do we do, set aside 10 telephones?" she said.

"How long does it take to do 75 students on the telephone anyway? And what happens if they haven't got a piece of information to hand?"