New teachers must seek garda clearance

MORE THAN 1,000 prospective teachers may be precluded from taking up jobs when schools re-open in September as they have not yet sought garda clearance under strict new vetting arrangements.

Almost three years after first being announced by Minister for Children Brian Lenihan, the expanded Garda Central Vetting Unit (CVU) is now in a position to check the backgrounds of all new teachers beginning work for the first time this autumn.

But, although around 2,500 students graduate from primary and second-level teacher training courses every year, only 1,400 have so far submitted vetting application forms to the Teaching Council. The council is the authorised body to seek clearance for teachers, and will forward all forms to the CVU for checking.

The council sent the first consignment of more than 600 forms to the unit in Thurles, Co Tipperary, at the end of June and around 200 more were sent to the CVU last week.

The forms are filled in and returned to the council, showing details of any convictions or prosecutions pending against the applicant.

However, as the registration body for the profession, the Teaching Council has yet to decide the relevance of a conviction to the teacher’s suitability for registration.

“The council has established a vetting group to assess the information returned by the CVU. The group is currently drafting guiding principles to assist in its consideration of convictions,” a spokesperson said.

She reminded newly qualified teachers who hope to take up a teaching post in September of the urgency of returning the completed vetting application form to the Teaching Council. All those who completed teacher training courses this summer should be aware of the requirement, as council representatives visited the relevant colleges in recent months.

The council will forward applicants a vetting letter after the CVU has replied to them, which the teacher must give to prospective employers before a school can decide to appoint them to a teaching post.

The Department of Education issued a circular letter to schools last month telling them that the offer of a post can only be made on a provisional basis if the vetting process is not satisfactorily completed. Such a provisional appointment may be terminated if the school authorities consider the person is not suitable for appointment after receiving the result of the vetting application.

But it is stressed that the fact that a person has a conviction does not automatically render him or her unsuitable for work with, or access to, children or vulnerable adults.

“A person’s suitability should be looked at as a whole in the light of all the information available including the relevance of the nature of the offence in the context of child protection,” a senior department official wrote to schools.