Melbourne woman Georgina Rachelle cleared by tribunal to teach again in Victoria

A former teacher at Scotch College and Star of the Sea who was charged with threatening to kill her sister and driving offences over more than a decade, has been cleared to work in schools.

Georgina Rachelle was a former teacher at Melbourne’s elite Scotch College.

A former teacher at Scotch College and Star of the Sea College who was charged with threatening to kill her sister has been cleared to continue teaching in Victoria.

Melbourne woman Georgina Rachelle successfully ­argued in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal this week that a range of charges in two countries spanning more than 15 years did not make her unfit to teach.

The charges also included two counts of drink-driving, obtaining financial gain by ­deception and contravention of court orders.

She was registered to teach in Victoria in 2011. On later moving to New Zealand, she was registered to teach there. But that registration was cancelled in 2019 after she was convicted of two serious drink-driving offences.

Back in Australia in 2019, Ms Rachelle renewed her Victorian registration but did not disclose her NZ drink-driving convictions or the fact her registration was cancelled there.

In 2021, Ms Rachelle was charged with three counts of making threats to kill and one count of using a carriage service to menace. She pleaded guilty and was convicted and fined, but the charges were dismissed on appeal in 2021. The charges related to a fallout with her sister, who had slept with her husband, she said.

The Victorian Institute of Teaching cancelled her registration in 2022 as a result. Ms Rachelle appealed to the AAT.

Its deputy president Peter Britten-Jones ruled that her “character, reputation and conduct are such that she should be allowed to teach”.