File
File
The thought is jaw-dropping: Every teacher newly appointed to a post in education IS NOT being screened to the full extent of the law.
So, how has this been allowed to happen?
The Education Department claims they aren’t the ones who ‘directly’ employ teachers, stating that it is the job of the provincial branches to conduct the research.
READ: SA Crisis: Horror as 8-year-old girl raped at school
The National Sexual Offenders Register is run by the Justice Department and came into effect in 2015. It serves to protect our children from schools hiring staff who have had any past sexual convictions. But employees who work for the provinces have claimed that the process is ‘inaccessible’ to them.
DA MP Terri Stander reacted to these complaints by taking her questions to parliament, where the Justice Department said that the Education Department had made “zero attempt” to screen an employee against the register
Understandably, Stander was angered by this debacle:
“If they have never applied for access to the register [it means] they have never screened a teacher against it. The Department of Basic Education has put our children at risk of sexual abuse and assault.”
Eastern Cape education spokesman Mala Mtima revealed that they rely on the SA Council for Educators’ (SACE) list of people prohibited from teaching to vet their potential employees.
It is unknown how often the SACE updates their list of teachers fired for assault and how much reliance they put on schools to report such incidents to them.
Western Cape Education Department spokesman Jessica Shelver was keen to reassure people that schools are using other methods to ensure pupil safety, and gave us a detailed statement:
Read: Alleged sexual and racial abuse reported at Cape Town girls school
Background checks are being carried out, but they are not following the proper channels set out in law. Do we really need our educators cutting corners when it comes to the safety of our children?
