Plan to vet school helpers scrapped

Last week Anne Tolley introduced a replacement bill which kept new rules for part-time staff and contractors, but dropped the requirement for vetting of parents and volunteers. Photo / Supplied

Police checks on parents and volunteers in schools and early childhood centres will no longer be required under legislation introduced to Parliament by Education Minister Anne Tolley.

A Labour bill introduced last year would have forced schools and childcare centres to get police checks of any parents and volunteers who had unsupervised access to children.

Last week Mrs Tolley introduced a replacement bill which kept new rules for part-time staff and contractors, but dropped the requirement for vetting of parents and volunteers.

Labour had decided to extend the vetting over concerns from within the education sector and the Children's Commissioner that non-staff were being left alone with children without first being checked for criminal records.

The explanatory note to Labour's bill said there were "inadequate safeguards" in the existing law to ensure children's safety from people who might be in the school but did not have to be vetted.

However, Mrs Tolley said through a spokeswoman that she had dropped it in response to strong objections from many in the education sector.

"They saw it as creating a barrier that would prevent parents from volunteering at schools and early childhood centres."

She said the new legislation recognised volunteers were working in a controlled and supervised environment.

The primary teachers' union, New Zealand Educational Institute, welcomed the news as "common sense". National president Frances Nelson said the vetting of parents would have led to a drop in parents helping out, especially if they were needed at short notice.

The union had objected when Labour introduced it, arguing it was ridiculous for parents and grandparents helping with a sports team at lunchtime or an individual child with reading in school to be vetted.

Ms Nelson said most schools had sensible policies for parental involvement and kept a watchful eye on what was happening around them.

"It would have narrowed the things parents could do in school for no good reason. It didn't seem sensible to require police vets for every person that helps out just in case they might spend 30 seconds alone with a child."

NZEI said the problem was small - of 35,000 non-teacher police checks between 2004 and 2006, only seven people were found to have criminal records that caused concern.

Mrs Tolley's bill retains other changes to vetting rules - including requiring part-time non-teaching staff to wait for police checks before they are allowed unsupervised access to children. It also lightens the burden for schools by requiring checks of contractors only if they spend unsupervised time with children rather than as a matter of course.

Mrs Tolley has also scrapped other measures in Labour's bill - including a bid to abolish exemptions which allow students to leave school before they turn 16 if there is a good reason.

Mrs Tolley's replacement bill also keeps the required law changes to crack down on unregistered teachers by allowing the Teachers Council and Ministry of Education to share data.