4 November 2026
Protect and Teach founder Cathy Mudge and Safeguarding Lead Jennifer Thetford-Kay will appear in a new UK Column interview with Professor Diane Rasmussen, UK Column’s Commissioning Editor for Written Content, streaming live tomorrow at 1pm.
The discussion will explore education, safeguarding and the expanding role of schools, alongside wider questions about political impartiality, parental involvement and the boundaries of schools’ responsibilities.
The interview will be available to watch live on YouTube and on demand immediately afterwards.
Watch the UK Column interview live from 1pm on 5 November 2026:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y6RP0uElKo
A new UK Column education series
The interview coincides with the publication of the first article in a new six-part UK Column series examining how the role of schools has changed, who has shaped those changes, and what that means for children, parents and teachers.
UK Government and Education: Part 1: Who Decided What Schools Are For?
Part One, written by Protect and Teach Safeguarding Lead Jennifer Thetford-Kay, traces the gradual expansion of the school’s role beyond formal education and asks a simple but important question: Who decided what schools are for?
The article looks at how responsibilities for education, welfare, safeguarding, behaviour, health and wider social policy have accumulated over time.
The article will be published by UK Column on 5 November 2026. The link has already been created but will only become publicly accessible once publication goes live.
Link to Part One:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/uk-government-and-education-part-1-who-decided-what-schools-are-for at https://www.ukcolumn.org
What the series will cover
The six-part series will explore:
- how the purpose of schooling has expanded;
- what safeguarding actually means;
- the development of the “whole-school” approach;
- who is involved in teaching and influencing children;
- the relationship between parents, schools and the state; and
- where current education policy may be heading next.
Part Two, What Does Safeguarding Actually Mean?, examines how safeguarding developed from a narrower protective function into a much broader framework encompassing welfare, early help, mental health, online harms, radicalisation, information sharing and other areas of school life.
The six-part series is being written by Jennifer Thetford-Kay and Cathy Mudge and developed with UK Column’s Commissioning Editor for Written Content, Professor Diane Rasmussen.
Meet the authors
Cathy Mudge — UK Column
https://www.ukcolumn.org/writer/cathy-mudge
Jennifer Thetford-Kay — UK Column
https://www.ukcolumn.org/writer/jennifer-thetford-kay
Protect and Teach welcomes the opportunity to contribute to a wider public discussion about the role of schools, the boundaries of safeguarding, political impartiality, parental involvement and the need for clear distinctions between law, statutory guidance, policy and professional practice.
We will share each instalment as it is published via the UK Column site: https://www.ukcolumn.org/