Fake teacher revealed: Chantelle Strohhecker guilty to teaching without a licence
A Dallas woman’s deception has been exposed after she duped two primary schools in Melbourne’s southeast with a fake teaching licence.
South East
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A Dallas woman has been exposed as a fake teacher after tricking two primary schools in Melbourne’s southeast using a fraudulent teaching registration.
Chantelle Strohhecker, 29, was found guilty of teaching without a licence or proper accreditation in Moorabbin Magistrates’ Court on June 18.
After having her case put off for months, claiming she had been “given permission from the school to teach,” Strohhecker was sent home on Tuesday with a bad report card and a whopping fine to go with it.
The court heard Strohhecker’s offending began in January 2022, after two applications for Permission to Teach registration with the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) were refused, due to her having an incomplete academic transcript.
Despite VIT informing Strohhecker that she was not registered to teach, the court heard she commenced teaching at St Mary Magdalen’s School in Chadstone as a classroom teacher in Term 1 of 2022.
Strohhecker’s employment was reliant on her being registered with the VIT, which she fraudulently confirmed with the school principal that she was.
In her job application, she claimed to not only be registered to teach with VIT, she also claimed to have completed a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education, which she had not.
Strohhecker worked at two schools over an nine-month period in 2022, never informing either school of her lack of registration.
This comes after Strohhecker claimed in April that she had been “given permission to teach” by St Peter’s Primary school in Clayton, where she worked from June to August in 2022.
Magistrate Rob Stary said Strohhecker’s actions were “serious” and should be dealt with in the same manner.
Strohhecker was fined $25,000 with conviction for six charges of undertaking duties of a teacher without a licence, and a further $6500 in costs.
