Solomone Vakatale, an attendee at the Ba consultation on the review of the Education Act, says that recently there have been cases of teachers being sexually and verbally harassed by students.
He told the consultation at Ba Civic Centre on Wednesday that while there is a Child Protection Policy in place, there is no provision for a teacher protection policy.
“We, the teachers in the classroom, have been suffering so much and, on humanitarian grounds, I strongly believe that there should be a policy to safeguard the welfare of teachers,” Mr Vakatale said.
“Some provisions that the ministry has implemented are for students to be disciplined and also to find another school, so that the matter can be resolved.”
In response, Education Ministry Legal Draft consultant Lyanne Vaurasi said the issue was also raised at the Tavua consultation on Tuesday.
“Currently, in the Act, there are offence provisions for any mistreatment of teachers and there are also penalties, but the penalties are very low,” she said.
“So, that’s something that we’re looking at. Increasing the penalties so that it acts as a deterrent.”
Ministry legal draft consultant David Solvalu said Section 31 of the existing Education Act made it an offence to abuse teachers, an offence accompanied by a $200 fine.
“If it’s an assault, a common assault, then another avenue would be the Crimes Act, but that would be a one-year imprisonment penalty.
“I note that your question is about a teacher protection policy, but if you’re dealing with sexual abuse or assault, then I don’t know if a policy would be that useful, because those are crimes.”
Mr Solvalu said an issue with students is that under the Crimes Act, if they are aged below ten, they have no criminal responsibility.
“Children under the age of ten cannot commit crimes under the law, because they’re children but between ten and 14, you can be held criminally responsible, but there’s a level that needs to be proven, and that’s you need to prove that the student knew that their conduct was wrong.
“So, prove that they had the capacity to understand that what they were doing was wrong at the time they did it.”
