By REBECCA WALSH
Police and character checks of all people working regularly in schools and early childhood centres will be among the responsibilities of the new Education Council the Government is setting up.
The council will replace the Teacher Registration Board and is expected to be operating by the middle of next year.
Education Minister Trevor Mallard is due today to open the first meeting of the Education Council working group. Its members are charged with developing the detail for the council's operation.
Mr Mallard said a professional body for teachers was long overdue. The council would have more teeth and a broader range of powers than the Teacher Registration Board.
"It will be able to suspend teachers, it will be able to require them to have supervision, which the current board can't do. At the moment it can only deregister or not.
"But, more importantly, it will have a positive role in the setting of standards for in-service and pre-service training and performance requirements for teachers. It will be a real professional body."
Mr Mallard said the council would set in place minimum professional development requirements for teachers and would be responsible for ensuring that the training teachers had received was acceptable.
It would also have responsibility for ensuring that all people who worked regularly in schools and early childhood centres, including caretakers and teacher aides, were subject to police and character checks.
"We think that being a teacher or being present with young children, even if it's in a teacher aide capacity or as an early-childhood worker, is a position of tremendous power. I think people need to be properly checked before the point that they are being entrusted with that."
Mr Mallard said there had been a number of mistakes in the past where the police knew about a person's offending and it had continued. "We have got to stop it."
The minister plans to introduce legislation this year for mandatory reporting of misconduct by teachers.
Checks on every school worker
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