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Independent Newspapers<\/p>\n
File photo: Independent Newspapers<\/p>\n
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Related Stories<\/p>\n
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Durban – South Africa\u2019s teachers are not being checked against a register specifically set up to protect children from criminal and sexual offenders. <\/p>\n
In a response to a parliamentary question from the DA, it was revealed on Tuesday that the South African Council of Educators – the body responsible for registering teachers and \u201cenhancing the status of the teaching profession\u201d – had failed to screen potential teachers against the Child Protection Register, since its inception. <\/p>\n
The register was created in conjunction with the Children\u2019s Act of 2005 and lists people deemed unsuitable to have contact with children. <\/p>\n
The DA\u2019s spokesman on social development, Mike Waters, said the admission was concerning and could put pupils in danger. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe register was established to protect children. The majority of teachers would never hurt a child, but there are some teachers who are not fit to be in the classroom,\u201d said Waters. <\/p>\n
Council chief executive Rej Brijraj admitted the council had not used the register when screening teachers, and had relied on potential teachers to make a declaration that they had never been found guilty of a criminal offence. <\/p>\n
\u201cUntil recently the council felt the declaration was sufficient,\u201d said Brijraj. <\/p>\n
He said the council had recently held meetings with the Department of Social Development to address the issue of background checks, and was committed to screening all future teachers against the register, as well as carrying out criminal checks. <\/p>\n
He said all teachers in public and private schools would be rechecked against the register. <\/p>\n
Section27 spokeswoman Nikki Stein said there were cases in which teachers had been found guilty of misconduct, only to take up a post at another school. The register could address this. <\/p>\n
But Stein said the register was not updated regularly. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of cases go unreported, and the procedures surrounding investigations are complex and often are not completed,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Department of Basic Education spokesman Panyaza Lesufi said he was reluctant to comment until he had been briefed by the council, but it would assist where necessary. <\/p>\n
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The register has come under the spotlight since it was reported in May last year that despite almost 20 000 cases of child abuse being reported since 2010, fewer than 500 people had been added to the list of those not fit to be in contact with children. <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n \u00a0 <\/p>\n * If you use Gmail to read IOL’s newsletters, note that Google is rolling out a new tabbed inbox that filters your mail into 5 separate tabs – Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. IOL emails will probably be sent to the \u201cPromotions\u201d tab instead of the \u201cPrimary\u201d tab. If you don’t want it that way, drag the newsletter from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab. An alert will pop up. Click \u201cyes\u201d and your newsletters will continue to go to your Primary inbox. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Independent Newspapers File photo: Independent Newspapers Related Stories Sex pest teachers are bribing parents \u2018Corruption, sex abuse rife at schools\u2019 Teacher, 43, fathers child by student, 14 Durban – South Africa\u2019s teachers are not being checked against a register specifically set up to protect children from criminal and sexual offenders. In a response to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-21572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}