AT LEAST ten convicted sex offenders have been cleared by ministers to work with children over the past three years, The Times has learnt.

Officials are now trawling through another five years of records to discover how many more teachers and school staff have been allowed to work with children despite being on the sex offenders register.

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, admitted yesterday that “a small number” on the register were not on List 99, banning them from schools. But she refused to say how many cases there were or how long the situation had being going on.

An intense search was under way last night to establish exactly how many teachers had avoided List 99, the government blacklist barring them from schools, since the sex offenders register was set up in 1997.

The Education Secretary said that she took “full responsibility for all the decisions taken in the department on whether individuals should be placed on List 99”. But she implied that other ministers had been at fault by announcing that she had taken charge “with immediate effect” of decisions on all List 99 cases involving people on the register.

Ms Kelly will come under intense pressure to disclose more information when she faces MPs at Education Questions in the Commons today. The Conservatives demanded last night that Ms Kelly “come clean” on the scale of the problem.

Tony Blair sought to shore up his embattled Education Secretary by authorising a Downing Street spokesman to break with precedent and state that Ms Kelly would not lose her job in a reshuffle expected within days.

Asked whether the Prime Minister retained full confidence in her, the spokesman said: “The answer is yes.”

The controversy erupted after it emerged this week that Paul Reeve began a job as a PE teacher at the Hewett School in Norwich, Norfolk, last month. Mr Reeve was on the sex offenders register after accepting a police caution for accessing paedophile websites.

He had disclosed his status as a sex offender to the school and presented a letter from the Safeguarding Children Unit of Department of Education, on behalf of the Secretary of State, dated 5 May 2005.

It stated that Ms Kelly had ruled he should not be placed on List 99 and “was not unsuitable for working with children”.

The letter made specific reference to Mr Reeve being on sex offenders register and gave reasons for the decision, including: “In particular you deny intentionally accessing child pornography”.

The Secretary of State gave weight to “the advice from her senior medical officer who did not believe you presented a risk to children in your care”.

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