Maria l-Maws: now he wakes up
The Minister of Education
Maria l-Maws, the Minister for Education (that was his pseudonym when he was an ‘anonymous’ columnist for a Labour Party newspaper some years ago) has expressed his surprise and dismay that supply teachers and similar are not required to have a warrant.
He has said in stentorian tones that he will make sure all teachers, of whatever stripe, are required to have one.
Are we supposed to be impressed? He was the shadow minister for education for five years, and now minister for one year, and he doesn’t know that supply teachers don’t need warrants.
Did it have to be the death of a pupil at the hands of her teacher to make him wake up to the fact that supply teachers are not required to have a warrant or even to be trained teachers?
Instead of faffing around with that unbalanced drunkard’s vendetta campaign for divorce legislation or playing the clever Dick with smart remarks about Tonio Fenech’s benighted clock, he should have been scrutinising the system in his role as shadow minister for education.
In any case, while teacher training and warrants are essential, in themselves they are no guarantee of reliability when because personality testing isn’t part of the assessment process. So Maria l-Maws has to work on that, too.
Do you really need to take a teacher training course to know you shouldn’t have a personal relationship with a pupil, tank up on painkillers and whisky, keep her away from her home, drive to Dingli cliffs at night, and jump off with her? Of course not. It’s the man’s personality disorders that are the problem here, not his lack of teacher training or warrant. Even if he had both, he would still have had those same disorders and the same thing would have happened.
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Supply teachers do not even need a degree. They only need two A-levels.
Having been shadow minister for so long he got used to living in the shadow of the kitchens where caretakers prepared snails and horsemeat and head teacher invited him to the fare. A very significant and fattening contribution to the nation.
Personality testing by professionals HAVE to be part of the process when vetting a teacher or anyone who is intended to have children in their care. I am shocked that it is not already the case.
Yes I agree with you it definitely depends on the character of the person. Anyone can have a warrant but how you behave with your collegues and students during school hours I think it depends alot on the character of the individual. for eg if a person has been a bully all her life the warrant is not going to change the way he acts with others. Unfortunately indeed there are those who abuse because of their position and power.
What about unqualified learning support assistants? These are in direct contact with very vulnerable pupils and need more training.
They are the icing on the cake. Most of them do not even hold the core subjects SEC qualifications. For example, how can a learning support assistant help a pupil in Physics when the LSA doesn’t even hold a minimum qualification in the subject?
Evarist, get off your backside, forget the non-existent road map and start doing something real.
Do not attempt to hoodwink people with brains(i.e.non PL supporters).
They are watching you.
Now is your chance. Deliver or perish.
Get going for Christ’s and our children’s and grandchildren’s sake.
There is a reason why supply teachers do not need a warrant and are accepted even with low levels of training. The reason is that usually if a school needs a teacher then it will be looking for a person with a teachers’ degree and a warrant it is when you cannot find such a person that you try to employ a supply teacher.
For certain subjects or for primary schooling It is usually quite easy to find a replacement teacher but in some sectors one struggles. Now the thinking is that it is better to have someone with an a-level in say chemistry teaching the students than nobody. Obviously this is not always the case and sometimes more harm is done.
Now the Minister needs to decide if he wants to have supply teachers or not. Does he want to retain the flexibility of filling in posts for a short period of time (example until a teacher returns from maternity leave). If not he will surely end up with several classes without teachers and will still need a solution for this other problem.
Again this has nothing to do with this case. To my knowledge there is no psychological testing done before giving a person a teacher’s warrant so this person would have had a warrant and would have still done the same thing to this young girl.
What next? Will all practitioners, in ALL professional fields be asked to sit for psychological assessment prior to the issue of their warrants?
I wasn’t suggesting professionals should be tested but that the warrant would have been given regardless so the warrant in itself is not a safeguard.
A psychological test might reveal something although this is no guarantee either.
However I think that if you are dealing with children you should be psychologically tested yes you can never be safe enough.
I don’t like to admit it but you cannot trust anyone any more (maybe since the dawn of time) not a teacher, not a priest, not your neighbour, not anyone.
“Will all practitioners, in ALL professional fields be asked to sit for psychological assessment prior to the issue of their warrants?”
Why not, when the safety of others is in their hands?