Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal complaints rise in 2024 – The Front Page

The Teaching Council received 524 complaints, mandatory reports and self-reports last year. Photo / 123RF

There are a number of employment dispute avenues in New Zealand, depending on what industry you’re in.

If you’re a teacher you have to appear before something called the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal. When a matter of teacher conduct is referred to the tribunal by the Complaints Assessment Committee (CAC), a formal process culminating in a hearing takes place.

Last year the Teaching Council received 524 complaints, mandatory reports and self-reports, which amounted to 0.5% of the total number of teachers who held a practising certificate.

It’s more than in 2023, during which there were 462, but that amounted to 0.4%.

No further action is taken on about 40% of matters the council receives and that could be because it’s been addressed well by the school/centre – or it’s not of the nature or severity to warrant a referral to any further disciplinary processes.

New Zealand has about 114,000 registered and certified teachers working in early childhood, primary and secondary schools. Only a fraction are ever brought before the tribunal.

A Teaching Council spokesperson said in a case where a teacher has been alleged to have committed a serious offence that “gives rise to concerns around the safety of children”, the council will seek an undertaking from the teacher not to teach or can seek an interim suspension of their practising certificate until the matter is finished.

“To be clear, Council’s conduct process will not conclude until any case involving criminal charges is fully resolved in the courts. That is, the criminal justice process happens first, followed by the appropriate Teaching Council conduct process, whose focus is on determining whether a teacher can remain in the profession, and if so, under what conditions,” they said.

The tribunal deals with cases of all kinds, from sexual advances to fraud to violence.

Open Justice reporter Jeremy Wilkinson told The Front Page the tribunal can censure a teacher, fine them, impose conditions on their practicing certificates and cancel their registrations.

“The Police will obviously charge someone where they can, where they have enough evidence to. But, in some cases, the charge doesn’t meet the threshold for a criminal one. So, a good example of this is that the age of consent in New Zealand is 16 years old.

“So, it’s not illegal for a teacher to engage in a physical, sexual relationship with a 16-year-old. But, it is deeply, fundamentally, ethically and morally inappropriate in a professional conduct context. So, they wouldn’t be criminally charged, but they would end up before the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal and probably lose their teaching registration for it,” he said.

Wilkinson last year analysed a number of cases, dating back to 2010. Of the 89 involving an inappropriate relationship with a student, 53 – or 60% – involved teachers using social media to effectively groom the young people in their care.

He said that in 24 of those cases where texting, emailing or social media were tools used by a teacher to communicate with a student, some form of physical sexual relationship developed.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about what kinds of cases the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal covers.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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