By Caroline Schelle
A Melbourne teacher who used fake qualifications to gain positions as a principal was motivated by the desire for attention and authority, a court has heard, but he will not spend time behind bars.
Rhett Watts appeared at the County Court of Victoria on Thursday for his sentence after the former teacher pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining financial advantage by deception between January 2017 and July 2021.
Rhett Watts was sentenced to a two-year community corrections order after pleading guilty to obtaining financial advantage by deception in the County Court of Victoria.Credit: Caroline Schelle
Watts was ordered to serve a two-year-community corrections order with 250 hours of community service.
Watts, who was registered with the state’s teaching body in 2005, falsely claimed he had master’s degrees in special education and science, and had nearly finished a degree in business administration.
The court was told Watts received advice from a person in Queensland to “enhance” his resume with the fake qualifications, and Watts claimed that person fabricated the supporting documents.
The 43-year-old also falsely claimed he was employed as a physical education teacher at Karingal Park Secondary College, now called McClelland College, in 2004.
The teacher used doctored documents and his embellished resume to gain a position as a principal at Katandra School in Ormond in 2018, and was appointed assistant principal of the Marnebek School at Cranbourne in 2017.
Watts’ scheme came undone when he applied for a job at Frankston High School in 2020, and one of his interviewers, a previous Karingal Park principal, uncovered his lies.
The former Karingal Park principal, Angela Pollard, managed a program at the school – which improved the outcomes of disengaged students – that Watts claimed to have started.
Pollard had no memory of Watts working at the school and passed on the information to other hiring panel members.
“Thus your deceptions unravelled,” judge Andrew Palmer said.
Rhett Watts.
It prompted an investigation into the teacher, who claimed there were “typos and some information that should have been removed”, and blamed errors made by a recruitment consultant.
The judge said that despite the revelations, Watts sought to deny and obfuscate.
“You were motivated by ego and the desire for attention and authority,” Palmer said.
During his time in the high-ranking positions at the schools, he earned just over $697,000 – nearly $200,000 more than he would have if he had remained a teacher.
The judge said Watts was passionate about specialist education and now worked in customer relations at Dan Murphy’s. “The career you spent many years developing is no longer open to you,” he said.
In April 2021, Watts took sick leave from Katandra School and then sent a resignation letter. He was able to obtain another job as a principal at Currajong School in East Malvern.
The prosecution accepted Watts’ offending was on the lower scale and that he had pleaded guilty at an early stage of the court process.
The disgraced teacher also agreed to pay back the Education Department more than $178,000.
If he had not pleaded guilty, Watts would have been sentenced to 18 months in prison with a non-parole period of 12 months.
After the decision, an Education Department spokesperson on Thursday said no children or staff were placed in danger by Watts’ offending.
“There are no other allegations about his conduct or performance during his employment at the Education Department,” they said.
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