Misconduct findings against Education Dept staff
Education Department boss Tony Harrison has revealed that two departmental staff have been found guilty of serious misconduct, in the wake of the Debelle inquiry into a child sex abuse case at a western suburbs school.
Of the 11 Education Dept bureaucrats who had formal disciplinary processes begun due to the findings from the Debelle Inquiry, at least two have lost their jobs, and, Harrison revealed this morning, two other bureaucrats have had findings of serious misconduct recorded against them.
Senior department staff Jan Andrews and Gino DeGennaro have both left the department. Two others had been found guilty of serious misconduct: one, a contracted teacher, has been prevented from teaching in the future, and the other was given a “final warning”.
Six of the other 11 had face to face counselling sessions with Harrison. The final bureaucrat had no finding recorded against them.
Harrison said he inherited a large and “clunky” department, and he immediately started a series of processes and reorganisations to drive cultural change.
“I very quickly took a view that I had to bring together those pieces of work and … take ownership of those recommendation as a dept… and also then putting a very high priority on the implementation of the recommendations,” he said.
“I very quickly focused on the leadership group within the organisation.”
He said “certainly from my perspective getting the right leadership strategy, structure and culture is of the utmost importance” in fixing the department’s culture.
You might like
The other key focus was on establishing systems and structures within the critical incident division, plus redesigning the internal processes in the legal and internal investigation teams, Harrison said.
It was very important the dept owned the Debelle process’s recommendations, Harrison said.
Harrison strongly denied that any of the sacked beauracrats had been scapegoated to sate public anger stemming from Justice Debelle’s findings.
Jan Andrews told an earlier sitting of the upper house inquiry that she felt she had been made a scapegoat – a claim Harrison rejected today.
“I refute completely the terminology of a scapegoat,” he said.
“I was in no way whatsoever influenced by any person from a political perspective, internally from the organisation, other than advice I took from a legal perspective or from my HR department.”
He said the community deserved a public service which was held accountable for its performance.
“People do make mistakes. But at times you have to take a stance in terms of holding people accountable for performance.”
Harrison said he had many sleepless nights as he contemplated ending the careers of long-serving bureaucrats – whom he described in particularly glowing terms.
“I was troubled over many weeks and months as to the appropriateness of that decision based on the length of service that both of these people had in particular provided,” Harrison said, “but it was about organisational integrity.”
Stay informed, daily
“The Mrs Andrew case, as well as Mr DeGennaro were certainly two of the most difficult in that process” because they were “extraordinarily committed” to the public sector.
Ultimately Harrison said he wasn’t able to hold confidence in the two executives, so they had to go.
“Ultimately I took the decisions I took. In relation to Mrs Andrews I was aware that her contract was up for renewal. I took the view that… she was ultimately responsible for activities in and concerning schools.
“I provided her procedural fairness in relation to that. But ultimately I took the decision I did.
“As a contracted senior executive… I took a view that it was an issue of trust and confidence.”
Australian Education Union state secretary Correna Haythorpe told the committee the entire process and attendant media coverage had had a “devastating impact” on the teaching community and had caused “a high level of stress and anxiety across the State’s teachers”.
“Everywhere that I go members talk to me about the devastating impact on the public education system, and their concerns about making sure that public confidence in our system is high,” she said.
Under questioning from Labor committee member Russell Wortley, she also said the constant media coverage of the issue was creating difficulties for teachers.
“Our concern is that we believe that there’s also been a level of politicking around these issues, and we think that that politicking needs to stop.
“With the greatest respect to our media colleagues … it is very difficult day after day when these matters are profiled in the public domain. We’re very interested in being part of the solution.”
The upper house committee is examining issues arising from the Debelle royal commission report.
The inquiry, headed by Former Supreme Court Justice Bruce Debelle, looked into a 2010 rape of a student at a western suburbs school by an after-school-hours-care worker. Other parents at the school were not informed of the case until 2012.
The report says the Education Minister at the time, now-Premier Jay Weatherill, wasn’t informed of the case.
The report details numerous failings on the part of the Education Department, including failing to inform parents that the accused man had been committed for trial, providing misleading information, and a failure to seek legal advice on the case.
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
