The Department of Basic Education has agreed to pay for the cost of teachers to be registered against the National Sex Offenders Register (NSOR). Prior to this teachers, through their various unions, objected to paying the fee out of their own pockets.
In a letter to Mathanzima Mweli, the director-general of basic education, four unions that make up the Combined Teacher Unions (CTU) stated that they and the department had not agreed that teachers should be responsible for paying for their own background checks.
According to Basil Manuel of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (NAPTOSA), the teacher unions are not opposed to the vetting process, but rather the lack of clarity in the process.
“It is just that we had a slight misunderstanding and the misunderstanding was about who pays this price for having the fingerprinting done and of course having the checking done by the police because it comes at a cost. Now to our minds, these are serving Educators and no law is retrospective. They can't be expected to pay as though they were incoming it's now a condition of employment not the condition changed”
Almost 25,000 public schools employ more than 447,000 teachers. The price of each teacher's fingerprint report, which must be ordered from the police, is approximately R75.
At first, provincial departments of education sent out circulars reminding schools that teachers were responsible for paying for the fingerprint reports. The provincial education department of the Western Cape was the only province that stated it was willing to pay for its schools.
Basil Manuel said his union supported the vetting of teachers but objected to them having to pay for it.
“I believe that pressure from the unions could have possibly had a role to play in the departments' agreeing to foot the bill,” Manuel further stated.
The process will start with teachers and staff in special schools and hostels and then in primary and secondary schools. Manuel emphasized that it cannot be done all at once since there is not sufficient capacity to do so, given the number of employees in the education sector
The South African Educators Council (SACE) raised concerns about the vetting of teachers in September of last year. At the time, the regulatory body announced that teachers had to submit a police clearance certificate that was not older than six months when registering with the council in accordance with a policy that had been introduced in 2019.
This is in addition to controversial media reports in November 2022 that revealed that the Gauteng Department of Education spent millions on teachers placed on precautionary suspension over sexual misconduct.
