Speaker 1: Hilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. There are
Speaker 2: a number of employment dispute avenues in New Zealand, dependent
Speaker 2: on what industry you're in. If you're one of the
Speaker 2: one hundred and fourteen thousand registered teachers in this country,
Speaker 2: you have to appear before something called the teacher's Disciplinary Tribunal.
Speaker 2: Last year, there were five hundred and twenty four complaints,
Speaker 2: mandatory reports and self reports received by the Teaching Council,
Speaker 2: which is about zero point five percent of the total
Speaker 2: number of teachers who held a practicing certificate. Now, while
Speaker 2: it's more than twenty twenty three, which saw four hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty two complaints, that accounted for just zero point
Speaker 2: four percent. For the latest in our series looking at
Speaker 2: how different tribunals work today on the Front Page, we're
Speaker 2: joined again by Open Justice reporter Jeremy Wilkinson. So tell me, Jeremy,
Speaker 2: what actually is the teacher's disciplinary Tribunal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, the Teacher's Disciplinary Tribunal is an arm of
Speaker 3: the Teaching Council who will appoint a what's called a
Speaker 3: professional conduct committee to charge or prosecute teachers before the
Speaker 3: Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal, and that's for breaches of their professional obligations,
Speaker 3: so that they're not breaches that are illegal in a
Speaker 3: criminal context, but they are breaches of their code of ethics.
Speaker 3: So that might be drug use or an inappropriate relationship
Speaker 3: with a student, or in some cases they're kind of
Speaker 3: taking a second bite out of the cherry. If, for example,
Speaker 3: there's a teacher who's been caught drink driving and is
Speaker 3: charged through the district court, then they might well, they
Speaker 3: probably will end up before the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal as
Speaker 3: well because it's a brief of their code of efforts.
Speaker 2: So what kind of powers does the tribunal have.
Speaker 3: They can cancel a teachers registration so that that person
Speaker 3: can no longer teach in New Zealand. That really only
Speaker 3: happens for the most serious of breaches, but we do
Speaker 3: see it happen often. We will see a suspension or
Speaker 3: a fine or conditions imposed on their practice, and that
Speaker 3: those conditions might be they need to complete a course
Speaker 3: or have supervision while they teach, or inform a prospective
Speaker 3: employer that they've had a censure or a mark against
Speaker 3: them at the tribunal.
Speaker 2: What kind of cases have you seen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen quite a few in my time. There's
Speaker 3: a few. I think one that stands out is probably
Speaker 3: Sealin Romiah. He was the Jamescott High School deputy principal
Speaker 3: and he was caught sending explicit images and text messages
Speaker 3: to several students and another staff member, and he actually
Speaker 3: ended up in prison because one of those students was
Speaker 3: under the age of sixteen.
Speaker 2: Are all of the cases that the tribunal rules on
Speaker 2: made public? What's the threshold for keeping a teacher's name
Speaker 2: out of the public records? Say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So my understanding was that all of the tribunal's
Speaker 3: decisions are made public, but the teacher might get suppression. Basically,
Speaker 3: the tribunal will maker an assessment similar to the courts,
Speaker 3: about whether someone is entitled to suppression, and they'll take
Speaker 3: him into account a range of things. But the decision
Speaker 3: will be published, but whether that person's name is in
Speaker 3: it is a different thing.
Speaker 2: I saw a case recently that you reported on. It
Speaker 2: was a seventeen year old girl who said she was
Speaker 2: offered ten thousand dollars to drop a complaint against a
Speaker 2: family friend who came into her room in the hope
Speaker 2: that she would sleep with him. Now he wasn't her teacher,
Speaker 2: but he was a registered teacher. She took her complaint
Speaker 2: to the police, who then referred it to the Complaint's
Speaker 2: Assessment Committee of the teacher's Council, which then later che
Speaker 2: charge against him. So I guess this is an example
Speaker 2: of the kind of case that maybe police wouldn't be
Speaker 2: able to take to court and successfully convict, but the
Speaker 2: council could. Is that right?
Speaker 3: So the police will obviously charge someone where they can
Speaker 3: where they have enough evidence too, but in some cases
Speaker 3: the charge doesn't meet the threshold for a criminal charge.
Speaker 3: So I suppose a good example of this is that
Speaker 3: the age of consent in New Zealand is sixteen, So
Speaker 3: it's not illegal for a teacher to engage in a
Speaker 3: physical sexual relationship with a sixteen year old student, and
Speaker 3: purely in the terms of it not being criminal, but
Speaker 3: it is deeply and fundamentally ethically morally inappropriate in terms
Speaker 3: of a professional conduct context, so not illegal. They wouldn't
Speaker 3: be criminal criminally charged, but they would end up before
Speaker 3: the teacher's disciplinary tribunal and probably lose their teaching registration
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: Also recently, there was an interesting case from christ Church
Speaker 2: Boys High School where an ex teacher accused the headmaster
Speaker 2: of leaving feces on her property on eight occasions in
Speaker 2: retaliation for her raising concerns about him with the board
Speaker 2: and police. Now, this case was going through the Employment
Speaker 2: Relations Authority rather than the teaching council. But you then
Speaker 2: have a teaching council case processed in the year to
Speaker 2: June twenty twenty four where a Fielding daycare owner was
Speaker 2: found guilty of serious misconduct for her behavior towards children
Speaker 2: and staff members, including telling one staffer that she was
Speaker 2: quote too fat to eat KFC. So what is the
Speaker 2: threshold for a case to go to one tribunal over
Speaker 2: another When it comes to teachers.
Speaker 3: My understanding was that with the er, you needed to
Speaker 3: lodge your complaint to yourself. It's not a quasi judicial
Speaker 3: professional body that is prosecuting or laying charges against a
Speaker 3: professional like a teacher, a doctor, or a lawyer. Instead,
Speaker 3: you have a disgruntled employee who was taking their employer
Speaker 3: proactively through the court. I suppose and effect the employee
Speaker 3: becomes the prosecution. You know, they might hire a lawyer
Speaker 3: or an employment advocate to take the case on their behalf,
Speaker 3: whereas with the teacher's disciplinary tribunal, it is a professional
Speaker 3: conduct committee of the Teaching Council who will lay charges
Speaker 3: against a teacher for breaches of their conduct, and the
Speaker 3: same way that the Medical Council as a professional conduct
Speaker 3: committee or the New Zealand Law Society they have standards
Speaker 3: committees who will lay charges against lawyers on behalf of
Speaker 3: the law Society to take them to the lawyers and
Speaker 3: conveyances disciplinary tribunal. So I suppose that's whether the difference
Speaker 3: is one is person or complainant led the other side
Speaker 3: is led by the professional body.
Speaker 4: Nothing was done to prevent it. There were no talks
Speaker 4: to students about specific things. It was just kind of
Speaker 4: a don't connect with teachers on social media. There were
Speaker 4: never any hard lines about it and it was really
Speaker 4: up to the discretion of teachers at the end of
Speaker 4: the day. I think the issue is with these apps
Speaker 4: where you can erase all of the previous messages, you
Speaker 4: can delete texts, you can erase cool history, snapchats disappear,
Speaker 4: but having a platform where the it or the school
Speaker 4: department is able to have access to those records.
Speaker 2: I think that's really important. I stumbled upon your reporting
Speaker 2: of teachers and the use of social media. Can you
Speaker 2: tell me a little bit more about that?
Speaker 3: So I went through the numbers last year and looked
Speaker 3: at how many inappropriate relationship cases there were before the
Speaker 3: tribunal and of those, how many of those was social
Speaker 3: media a factor? And so the data showed that since
Speaker 3: twenty ten, there have been fifty three cases of teachers
Speaker 3: using social media to groom young people in their care,
Speaker 3: which makes up about sixty percent of the eighty nine
Speaker 3: cases involving that type of behavior in the last fourteen years.
Speaker 2: Have you spoken with anyone who feels that we need
Speaker 2: some kind of law around teachers student interactions updated given
Speaker 2: how social media controls our lives these days.
Speaker 3: I spoke to a few people for that article. One
Speaker 3: of them was Professor Michael McCauley. He's form a judge
Speaker 3: from the United Kingdom, a lecture at Victoria University School
Speaker 3: of Government, and he focuses on ethics and integrity with
Speaker 3: his own research. He said, be really simple and not
Speaker 3: really that controversial to ban social media contact between teachers
Speaker 3: and students, even in a digital age where students and
Speaker 3: teachers do actually need to be able to email or
Speaker 3: have some kind of communication for their assignments or their
Speaker 3: homework or whatever it is. Has point, I suppose was
Speaker 3: that you could just have one official point of contact
Speaker 3: basically so that there can be a site so that
Speaker 3: the messages can't be deleted. Like we saw with Seale
Speaker 3: and Remia from James Cook High School. He asked three
Speaker 3: students to download Signal, which is an encrypted messaging app,
Speaker 3: and the messages are deleted after a certain period of time.
Speaker 3: And that's I suppose a common theme that I saw
Speaker 3: among that data, with those sixty percent of those eighty
Speaker 3: nine cases was that it starts with emailing in the
Speaker 3: pre Facebook era, and now these days it is primarily
Speaker 3: texting or Facebook or Instagram, where these teachers are starting
Speaker 3: a point of contact that begins quite innocently and then
Speaker 3: progresses into something that is quite deeply inappropriate.
Speaker 2: When we spoke last, we talked about the length of
Speaker 2: time it takes to go through the human rights justice process.
Speaker 2: What's the turnaround for these cases.
Speaker 3: They're a good couple of years old generally by the
Speaker 3: time I see them come through into the written decision phase.
Speaker 3: So what happens is they held a hearing, and that
Speaker 3: hearing is it was similar to a courtroom, except a
Speaker 3: lot more informal, and then the tribunal panel members will
Speaker 3: go away and write a decision and a penalty for
Speaker 3: the teacher and it will often be given to the
Speaker 3: parties while in advance of it being made.
Speaker 1: Public schools could be more than twelve hundred teachers short
Speaker 1: this year with demand outstripping supply. And it's not just here.
Speaker 1: Data show it's a global issue, but in New Zealand
Speaker 1: the Ministry is projecting it's twelve hundred and fifty teachers
Speaker 1: short of what's needed.
Speaker 5: Ali Mattia used to be adopted. Now she wants to
Speaker 5: be here inspiring the next generation to pursue science.
Speaker 6: Being able to teach academics or especially a subject that
Speaker 6: I'm passionate about, but also being able to mentor students.
Speaker 6: I feel like that just adds another layer of value
Speaker 6: and impact to the students.
Speaker 5: High schools are said to face a teacher's shortage through
Speaker 5: to twenty twenty seven. According to the Education Ministries modeling.
Speaker 5: We have very few qualified applicants who have the right
Speaker 5: set of skills to be able to teach our school
Speaker 5: for any position.
Speaker 2: When you're ever reviewing these kind of cases, Jeremy, does
Speaker 2: it ever feel like there should be more standards in
Speaker 2: place for teachers or even just better checks and balances
Speaker 2: around who actually becomes a teacher?
Speaker 3: The Teachers Counsel I think they do a really good
Speaker 3: job of vetting teachers before they enter the profession. And
Speaker 3: the Teachers Council will be the first to say that
Speaker 3: the people who end up before the tribunal are a
Speaker 3: really small minority, and it is something that they stress
Speaker 3: when we ask them questions about people who have been
Speaker 3: suspended or had their registration canceled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, I mean how many cases do we
Speaker 2: see on average a year, say just off the top
Speaker 2: of your head, because there's more than you know, there's
Speaker 2: over one hundred thousand registered teachers or something like that
Speaker 2: in New Zealand.
Speaker 3: Hey, we might see on average around thirty thirty decisions
Speaker 3: a year. To throw an number out, to just throw
Speaker 3: a number out that seems about right, and we would
Speaker 3: cover actually quite a small percentage of those. So there
Speaker 3: are several decisions that have been uploaded this year, for example,
Speaker 3: which involve teachers who have struck a child. But it
Speaker 3: might be in quite a minor way, so they might
Speaker 3: have pulled on their shirt, you know, to get them
Speaker 3: to stop misbehaving or to direct them somewhere, and you're
Speaker 3: not allowed to You're not allowed to do that in
Speaker 3: New Zealand anymore. You're not allowed to lay your hands
Speaker 3: on a child in that way. But does it make
Speaker 3: media threshold for us to cover in most cases, No,
Speaker 3: unless it's quite severe.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Jeremy no Worrith no Worth. That's
Speaker 2: it for this episode of the Front Page. You can
Speaker 2: read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at
Speaker 2: enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page, which is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front
Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.