THE COLUMNIST STOOD on the burning deck, whence all but he (and a couple of other columnists and one or two professors) had fled. In recent days HMS Sanity has been set afire and abandoned by — it sometimes seems — most of the people on board.

The Education Secretary is under threat and according to her Labour colleague, the ever-helpful Ian Gibson MP, has only till the middle of the week (ie, tomorrow) to show that she’s in full command of the school paedophile crisis that has so suddenly engulfed her. The BBC news spoke yesterday morning of a “weekend of revelations” concerning dodgy teachers, and then seemed only to be able to find one new one, and a decent Sunday broadsheet ran a headline about how Ruth Kelly had known about the paedo problem since last year — only to reveal in the text that by “last year” what was meant was the December just gone.

At least Monday’s Mail attempted to put horrid flesh on the scary bones, itemising a “chilling roll call . . .” of paedos working with our kids. And what did this list amount to? Nine men. One had possessed indecent images of boys, but was cleared in 2001 by Estelle Morris to work in all-girls schools. This chap appealed to a tribunal against Morris’s ruling, and lost. Another, Paul Reeve, the PE teacher whose exposure started this whole furore, was cautioned by the police in 2003 for accessing banned images of children on the internet. The then-minister Kim Howells was advised that Reeve did not represent a threat and cleared him to work in schools. He was forced to resign after eight days after the police raised concerns. A Mr H had molested a 12-year-old boy in 1976, but had subsequently been allowed by a tribunal to teach 14 pluses; a Mr W had been allowed to teach under the last Conservative Government, despite allegations, and was fired for “inappropriate touching” some unspecified time afterwards. A Mr Y sent obscene text messages to a 16-year-old girl pupil, a Mr Z was fired for “inappropriate words” in the condensation on his prep school flat, and in 2001 a tribunal allowed him to return to teaching in non-boarding schools.

In fact, before the weekend, the only cited case of a sex offender coming back into teaching and committing a crime was that of Steven Taylor, who was on the sex offender’s list, and who subsequently raped an 11-year-old girl student in 2001.

That’s the “chilling roll call”. Complete, save for what the Mail describes as “one of the most disturbing cases” of all, that of William Gibson. Gibson — the weekend’s cause célèbre — was convicted of indecent assault against a minor, but subsequently found to be teaching in a boys school on the south coast. According to reports many of the parents are deeply unhappy with the discovery. Mary Nunn, mother of 16-year-old Darryl, told the Mail how dreadful it all was, and how threatening. “You don’t allow a bankrupt to work at a bank,” she said, “so why a paedophile at a school?”

But Gibson’s more detailed history was that he had had sex with a 15-year-old girl pupil a quarter of a century ago, subsequently married her and had a child with her. The chances of a Portchester pupil being made pregnant and then wed by this particular maths teacher must be rated as slim. But then, I don’t know Darryl.

It’s pretty obvious that Gibson is not a paedophile and is no kind of threat to adolescent boys. In fact, given that we know his proclivities better than those of most people, he may even be less of a threat than other adults in Darryl and Co’s lives. And, like all but one on the Mail’s chilling roll call, he has also — as far as we know — never done anything wrong after being allowed back into teaching. In other words (whisper this) the decisions of the successive secretaries of state, tribunals and officials seem to have been broadly right. There is no crisis.

I’m not soft in this. Those assessed to be a risk to children should never work with those children. And people should be prosecuted for paying for or encouraging the production of child porn; they are rightly put on the sex offenders register. But that doesn’t mean that they are paedophiles.

They may be, but there is a distinction — reinforced for me this morning by seeing the beautiful young waitress in my local café — between looking and doing.

Equally, those who abuse their trust (however tempted) by having sex with their charges should be sacked, and suspended from holding such trust. But the issue is manageable risk, not punishment. After a few years cannot a man or woman, who is no real danger to pupils, be permitted to teach again, if it is decided that he or she is fit to do so?

As we have come to learn, the education system has not chosen to use the blunderbuss of disqualifying anyone who makes an appearance on the sex offenders register for whatever reason. Instead they have had a discretionary system — List 99 — which may include those who do not feature on the register, as well as excluding many who do. Given the scope of the register, that’s sensible; a 1997 flasher is not necessarily a 2006 kiddy fiddler.

For many panickers, however, this system is just too complicated. To his immense credit James Naughtie, the Today programme presenter, attempted to explore the difficulties with Margaret Morrissey, spokeswoman for the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, yesterday. “It seems to be clear and simple to me and maybe to millions of other parents,” said Ms Morrissey, who has spoken to about 100, that those on the sexual offenders register “should not ever be allowed to work with children.”

It’s a view. There may not actually be a big problem with the current system, but perhaps the need is to change it anyway so that, in the words of the Labour MP Martin Salter, confidence is restored. Let’s ostentatiously fix the roof that ain’t broken. But there are big problems here, of which the biggest is the problem of natural justice. As Mr Gibson told the Bournemouth Echo yesterday: “I know what I did was wrong and I regret my actions . . . but I love teaching and I think I have something to offer.”

Shami Chakrabarti, where are you when we need you? If you listened carefully over the past few days you will have heard the obvious sounds of the Government responding to the panic by panicking itself, and the less obvious sounds of the opposition parties being very careful not to suggest solutions. That’s because there aren’t any, certainly not from the Government. Why anyone should believe that things would be made a single iota better by officials, panels, committees or a pantheon of the gods of Olympus taking decisions without ministers is beyond me.

But, as I said, most have fled the ship by now and are half way to Bonkers Island. As one Portchester mother complained, Mr Gibson was her son’s maths teacher and it was disgusting, because he was always giving the class detentions. Devious, devious swine.

david.aaronovitch@btinternet.com

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