Current sex pest teachers can evade new SACE police clearance requirement
19 April 2018
The announcement by the South African Council of Educators (SACE) that prospective teachers must provide a police clearance certificate before they can be registered will help in addressing the failures in the vetting of teachers.
This is, however, not enough as it unfortunately leaves massive gaps in the vetting system.
Existing teachers will not have to provide the certificate, which means that all current teachers will not be properly vetted; and cases of abuse that may have resulted in disciplinary hearings but not criminal cases will not be captured by a police certificate on a criminal history.
The DA is now submitting questions to each provincial department to ascertain what, if any, vetting processes are taking place, and whether or not they have reported every guilty disciplinary finding to SACE as is required by law.