The system of professional identification for teachers is in some parts dysfunctional, summarizes the research company Acta Publica in its report The teachers. According to the survey, only 34 of a total of more than 280,000 teachers (0.1 per thousand) have been legitimized since 2013.
Rape of children
According to the survey, among the licensed preschool teachers and teachers, there are 25 people who have been convicted of sexual offenses or child pornography offenses without this being reported to the Teachers’ Liability Committee. For example, a person who was convicted in 2018 of aggravated rape of a child has not yet had his or her identity card tested.
Furthermore, at least 176 teachers have been convicted of violent or threatening crimes, without the identification being tested.
In addition to this, about 300 licensed teachers have links to extremism or gang crime, according to the survey.
Does not report
The gaps in the system are several, according to the report. The courts must report convictions to the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, which in turn can forward the case to the Teachers’ Liability Committee. But far from all judgments are passed on.
Unlike healthcare, schools also have no obligation to report cases of suspected abuse or crime by teachers.
Furthermore, the debit register is not checked before a person receives a teacher’s ID issued by the National Agency for Education – the authority does not have that information.
The chairman of the teachers’ responsibility committee, Lars Dirke, says that it is not obvious who is responsible for keeping the system effective.
– It is the Swedish Schools Inspectorate that supervises, but they must find out things. They get a lot through notifications and then the courts have an obligation to report. But there are sources of error here – in that you may not know that it is a teacher who has been convicted, Dirke says to Expressen.