(1)
On 2 May 2019, the school provided working with children check verifications for some, but
not all, of its employees, and some of the verifications it provided were incomplete. The
records did not show all mandatory fields and some names did not match. Rabbi Slavin was
made aware of this;
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
In August 2019, office staff had responsibility for conducting working with children check
clearances, contrary to the school’s child protection procedures, which stated that the
principal was responsible for this;
On 18 March 2021, the school verified employee working with children check clearances,
even though many of the staff having been employed well before that date. The school could
not provide evidence of earlier verifications;
On 29 April 2021, when Inspector Williams made her report, the school had not provided any
evidence of verifying the martial arts teacher’s working with children check clearance, from
which I infer that this had not been done;
On 9 July 2021, when Inspector Prideaux completed her internal review report, the school had
not provided evidence that it had working with children check clearance for all persons in
child-related work at the school. One of the persons for whom there was no working with
children check clearance was allocated to teach classes;
(6)
The working with children check register held by the school when Inspector Prideaux
conducted her internal review did not include a record of all historical persons who were
employed or engaged in child-related work at the school; it included incorrect dates for
verifications and showed that the school had failed to verify some clearances;
(7)
(8)
The working with children check clearance of a Jewish studies teacher who commenced on
21 October 2021 was not verified until 11 November 2021 (as Ms Portelli confirmed at the
hearing);
By 21 December 2021, the school’s records indicated that each staff member currently
engaged at the school in child-related work had a current working with children check
clearance verified by the school, but there were discrepancies between the verification dates
recorded in the working with children check register and those on the printed copies of the
verifications and no verification records for one casual teacher (it being later confirmed by Ms
Portelli that, although the school had a copy of the teacher’s clearance, there was no
evidence of that teacher’s clearance having been obtained by the school);
(9)
In breach of the undertakings provided to NESA on 25 October 2021, the applicant failed to
record two persons engaged in child-related work on the working with children check register
(as notified to NESA on 3 and 7 March 2022). One was a person undertaking work
experience at the school in February 2022 for three weeks, who was named on the school
supervision roster. The other was a Jewish studies teacher who commenced work at the
school on 17 February 2022, and whose name was not included on the register until 7 March
2022.53
113 The school was non-compliant with s 47(1)(g)(ii) in 2019. Despite Rabbi Slavin being put on notice of
this in a meeting with Inspector Yates in August that year, the school did little, if anything, to address
the failings in this area. Its plan of 7 August 2019 to address identified non-compliances did not
include any measure to address its failure to comply with its legislative obligations under the Child
Protection (Working with Children) Act.
114 It may be inferred from the school’s verification of records of many existing employees in March 2021
that, before that date, many verifications had not been completed. That is a serious breach of the
school’s legislative obligation under s 9A of the Child Protection (Working with Children) Act not to
commence employing, or continue to employ, a worker in child-related work unless the employer has
53 Transcript, 9 June 2022, page 268.