Johannesburg - It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a very special person to teach a class of them. The problem is that teaching in South Africa is neither the calling nor the profession it once was.
On one side of the spectrum, our poorest schools are held to ransom by a very powerful union which resists any attempt by the government to regulate or in any other way hold its members to account.
On the other end, education is monetised by guaranteeing the best results possible.
Either way education suffers. Our children are poorer for it.
Not every teacher is lazy or only interested in teaching the best, by weeding out the rest. There are many teachers who go above and beyond every day in schools across the country.
But there are also those who are criminals. Literally.
Schools are legally required to conduct background checks on prospective teachers and any other staff, including coaches, administrators and ground keepers to ensure they aren’t on the National Register of Sexual Offenders.
Despite this, a third-party data agency has established that 3.6% of teachers have a criminal record yet are employed in schools. More alarmingly, more than two thirds of teachers who have criminal records do not disclose this. Forty percent of them are young teachers. A quarter have convictions for theft, 15% have sentences for assault, 4.6% for fraud and 3.9% for drugs. 2.63% have convictions for sexual offences.
There shouldn’t ever be a criminal in the classroom, but we have plenty.
It is easy to hold the government accountable, but in this case, the government, in the form of the police and the NPA, has done its job. The question is why haven’t the schools?
If a credit bureau can find this out, why can’t a school governing body?