Tauranga Boys' College defends review process after former teacher censured

Carel Human was a teacher at Tauranga Boys' College for a decade. Photo / File

Tauranga Boys' College has defended its review processes after one of its former teachers was censured for doing students' work for them, giving credits for work that had not been done and giving achieved marks to work not worthy of it.

Carel Human, a technology teacher at Tauranga Boys' College, was censured for serious misconduct and ordered to pay tribunal costs in an Education Council finding released last week.

He resigned from the school in January 2017 and has been re-employed at another school, the principal of which is aware of the issue.

This week, after the Bay of Plenty Times revealed the censure, Tauranga Boys' College principal Robert Mangan said the school had a thorough internal review and moderation process and took the importance of integrity and fairness in the assessment process very seriously.

"Through this process, we uncovered the issues and notified NZQA of our concerns. From here we undertook a thorough investigation which confirmed misconduct had occurred and non-compliance with both TBC and NZQA policies and procedures," Mangan said.

"As required where misconduct like this is identified, we then reported this to the Teachers Council who subsequently investigated with the resulting censure of the staff member for serious misconduct."

He said it was a unique incident which should not have happened, "however, we are confident in the processes we have in place which allowed us to quickly identify and then rectify, the issue".

Mangan said the school was committed to ensuring the integrity of the teaching, learning, and assessment process.

"We are confident of our ability to continue to offer a quality teaching, learning and assessment process for our students whilst also being supportive employers of all our staff."

Human had taught at Tauranga Boys' College for a decade and taken sick leave in Term 2 of 2016 while he received treatment for kidney cancer. While away his Year 11 engineering class was taught by three relief teachers.

When Human returned in Term 3 he found the class was behind.

Investigations found Human subsequently gave students achieved grades on a unit standard later. The work was found to be "so far off the mark" another teacher couldn't believe it.

He also had written the answers on the work of 28 per cent of students in the class. This work had been done in February and March.

During the Education Council hearing, the Complaints Assessment Committee said what Human had done "adversely affected the educational wellbeing of students, reflects adversely on his fitness to be a teacher and risks bringing the teaching profession into disrepute".

Human's counsel said while he acknowledged his actions amounted to serious misconduct, it had occurred during a period of stress and illness.

According to counsel, his motivation was helping students he felt had been disadvantaged by his own illness.

Human declined an opportunity to comment this week when approached by the Bay of Plenty Times.

His teaching license is still valid and he will undergo mentoring, do a course on assessment, moderation, professional boundaries and curriculum planning and delivery and has to show a copy of the decision to employers for the next two years.

Human is also unable to apply for or accept any principalship, head of department position or any position with management responsibility for three years.