Benefit cheat loses teaching registration

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A woman who collected more than $45,000 in benefits while training to become an early childhood teacher has had her registration cancelled after a disciplinary tribunal ruled she was an unfit role model.

The woman, who has not been identified, got $46,203 from a sickness benefit, domestic purposes benefit and ACC payments over six years - despite holding down five different jobs during that period.

She was convicted on a variety of charges stemming from the fraud and sentenced to five months' community detention and 250 hours of community work and costs.

Now, after a Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal hearing, she has also lost her ability to teach.

A police summary of facts said the woman began receiving a sickness benefit in March 2001 and a domestic purposes benefit in 2002 - both of which were granted on the basis she would immediately advise the Social Development Ministry if she started working.

But when the woman began work nine months after receiving her sickness benefit, she failed to mention it.

In the following years she changed jobs several times, not once contacting the ministry about her employment. She also filled in nine different forms as part of a review of her entitlement to benefits, each time saying she was not working or getting any other income.

It wasn't until October 2007 that she rang to say she was working and her benefits were finally stopped.

The woman told the tribunal that during the years leading up to 2007 she was a single mother trying to better herself for the future of her toddler.

"I knew I needed to change my life around, for not only my daughter, but also myself and so I decided to do my ECE teacher training. During this time I made choices, bad choices ..."

She said she didn't understand or consider the consequences of those choices at the time. "I didn't defraud/steal out of greed, I was doing it to survive and provide for my daughter. I am very sorry for what I have done."

The woman said it was only since becoming a teacher she realised the implications of what she had done.

"This is not the type of role model that I want to be to my daughter, my whanau, my iwi or my profession."

She pleaded with the tribunal to be allowed to keep her provisional teaching practice.

Tribunal members agreed her behaviour amounted to serious misconduct and reflected adversely on her fitness to be a teacher.

But when it came to choosing the punishment, chairman Kenneth Johnston and member Maraea Hunia said the woman's circumstances when the offending began were "very unfortunate" and she was suffering from severe clinical depression.

Given she had admitted wrongdoing and was regarded by colleagues as a competent and reliable employee they felt she should have been censured and allowed to keep working providing she fully disclosed her convictions to employers.

But the majority of the tribunal disagreed. They issued a formal censure and cancelled her registration, so she can no longer work as a teacher.