Schools caned over secrecy

By REBECCA WALSH education reporter

More incompetent and unfit teachers are being deregistered than ever before, but schools are still signing deals with bad teachers behind closed doors.

The Education Review Office has strongly criticised the board of Kaipara College in Helensville for a secret deal it signed with a teacher accused of serious misconduct towards a student.

John Langley, director of the Teacher Registration Board, said confidential settlements were a continuing concern.

Often teachers were not referred to the registration board when they should have been, and students were potentially put at risk because the teacher could go on to work in another school.

In the year to June, the board had received 34 requests for teachers to be deregistered, more than double the number of requests the previous year.

Four of those cases were for sexual offences, 26 for unfit teaching and four for incompetence. Sixteen teachers had been banned from classrooms as a result and eight cases were pending.

Dr Langley said he did not believe the increase was because there were more unfit or incompetent teachers, but because of a growing professional awareness that such matters should be dealt with openly.

Most schools handled issues of teacher misconduct or incompetence "quite well," he said, but it was still regular practice for schools to sign confidential settlements.

In the Kaipara College case, the Education Review Office criticised the board for not taking sufficient independent expert advice, for guaranteeing confidentiality of the agreement when it was not entitled to do so and for not referring the matter to the registration board.

It also said the terms of the agreement were "unjustifiably generous."

ERO head Dr Judith Aitken said the case should have been referred to the registration board because it raised ethical, legal and management issues.

College board chairman Stanley Phillips said the board was confident it had handled the matter appropriately.

A statement from the school's lawyers said the board had complied with the law, he said. The teacher no longer worked at the school but there were "no outstanding concerns for other schools or for the community."

Education Minister Trevor Mallard said he was extremely unhappy with the concept of a confidential agreement and that the board appeared to have tried to "work around the system" to avoid proper investigation of the case.

He said the Education Council, being set up to replace the Teacher Registration Board, would have greater powers to deal with incompetent or unfit teachers.

It would not have to wait for a referral from a school and would be able to suspend teachers and require them to have supervision. The board can only deregister or not deregister teachers.