Teacher’s behaving badly: Complaints rise against SA school staff

The tables have been turned on SA teachers as its revealed how many got in trouble – or copped complaints – over the past year.

More than 200 complaints were made last year about South Australian government school teachers over their attitude.

There also was one case of corruption, three cases of maladministration or mismanagement and five cases of misconduct detected, the Education Department’s 2020 annual report shows.

“All allegations of fraud are taken seriously and if necessary referred to the police and/or the Office for Public Integrity,” a department spokesman said.

“The allegation of corruption is the only matter put before the courts.

“All other matters have been or are being dealt with through internal processes.”

The allegation of corruption involved a staff member at Errington Special Education Centre in Plympton.

Education Department chief executive Rick Persse.

The allegation was about an “administrative” offence, understood to be about documentation, and did not involve safety of students or staff.

Overall there were 919 public complaints up from 807 in 2019.

While the number of complaints increased, it remained low given there were 24,695 full-time equivalent employees in the department as at June 30 last year.

This was 65 more than the year before.

The complaints alleged teachers and staff had failed to demonstrate empathy, respect, fairness, courtesy and cultural competency or were unwilling to go the extra mile, some 216 complaints made to the department alleged.

Staff attitude was the leading cause of complaints according to the department’s categorisation.

This was followed by incompetence, where 173 public complaints claimed teachers had failed to act on requests, made poorly informed decisions or provided incorrect services.

The 2020 annual report tabled in parliament this week uses a different categorisation system than last year when poor communication caused the most complaints followed by staff performance and then bullying.

A three-year program to prevent bullying has been initiated, including addressing non-physical harassment such as cyber bullying, the 2020 report says.

Writing in the report, chief executive Rick Persse said dealing with Covid-19 had made 2020 a challenging year but educators had not lost focus.

“For our schools and preschools, excellence in teaching is the number 1 predictor in improving a child’s education outcomes,” he said.

“One of our key areas of focus for 2020 was developing and rolling out new, high-quality, classroom-ready curriculum resources for our educators in what was the biggest curriculum development initiative ever seen in SA.”

The department recorded a $7 million loss on revenue of $3.6 billion.

Employee costs were the biggest expenditure at $2.6 billion.

Sixteen employees took targeted voluntary redundancies, costing $1.6 million.