Teachers Registration Board annual report reveals teachers banned in 2022-23

A teacher drunk on school grounds and another caught with pornography are among those banned by the education watchdog.

A teacher has been suspended after “appearing intoxicated” at a school graduation ceremony while another has been permanently banned for engaging in a sexual relationship with a student after they graduated.

The alarming cases are revealed in the latest annual report by the Teachers Registration Board, but it has not published the names or genders of the teachers, or named the schools.

The board received 334 reports raising red flags about educators in South Australia last financial year, including over incompetence, unprofessional conduct or an issue that “seriously impaired” their capacity to teach.

In total, nine teachers were suspended in 2022-23 after being charged with certain offences, and six teachers had their registration automatically cancelled.

The board, which oversees educators at public and private schools, also imposed conditions on 10 teachers, including requiring random drug and alcohol testing, regular reports from their doctor or principal or attendance at therapy sessions or a “professional boundaries” program.

The cases outlined in the report include:

A TEACHER disqualified permanently after they engaged in “extensive inappropriate electronic communication” with a student and gave inappropriate gifts. After the student graduated the teacher drank alcohol and engaged in “sexual relations with the student”.

A FORMERLY registered teacher disqualified permanently from re-registering. They touched four students “inappropriately over their clothing”, took indecent photographs of students and used their work computer to upload the images to personal devices. They were also found to have adult pornographic images on their digital camera “which was accessible to students in their classroom”.

A TEACHER suspended after they appeared drunk at a school graduation and on school grounds after hours. The teacher’s driver’s licence had previously been suspended for driving under the influence and they were involved in a traffic accident and recorded “a high breath analysis result for alcohol” within a few hours of leaving the school.

Their case was reviewed but a subcommittee of the board upheld the suspension.

The board said there was a “significant amount of witness evidence and objective information to suggest the teacher had been experiencing issues with overuse of alcohol in addition to mental health issues”.

Reports about teachers can be made to the board by employers, colleagues, police or other government workers, parents and carers. Educators can also self-report.

Under a change to the law in 2021 the board gained the power to suspend educators if it “reasonably suspects that the teacher poses an unacceptable risk to children”.

The first two teachers were suspended under this provision in 2022-23.