Call for criminal checks on school staff

Move follows court cases in which employees admitted they had sexually abused students. One had prior convictions

Parents, educators and children's groups have called for schools to be allowed to check the criminal records of prospective staff following two court cases last week in which school employees admitted they had sexually abused students.

Wong Chi-ho, 36, a former police officer who quit the force after two convictions for loitering in women's toilets, pleaded guilty to nine counts of indecent assault involving four girls at a Whampoa primary school where he worked as a technician after being released from prison. He is due to be sentenced next Friday.

In a separate case, physical education and Chinese teacher Chung Yui-hung, 38, pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl he had met through the internet and possessing child pornography. He will be sentenced later this month.

Leung Chung-wan, chairman of the Hong Kong Parents' Association, said parents would be shocked that a man who had been convicted of loitering could then get a job at a school. 'It should be forbidden that such a person be employed at a school,' he said. 'We have a duty to protect students.'

The convictions came the week after revelations in Education Post that the Education and Manpower Bureau did not do background checks on overseas teachers unless they volunteered information on prior criminal offences. 'The world is so big, it would be very difficult to check,' a bureau spokesman said.

Earlier last month, former maths teacher Tai Yuk-fai was jailed for six months for indecently assaulting a 17-year-old summer school student and her 18-year-old friend after luring them to his apartment on the pretext of telling their fortunes.

Spokeswoman for the Federation of Parent-Teacher Associations of the Northern District Cora Wong Mei-fung called on the government to give schools access to the criminal records of job applicants. She said it was 'very dangerous' if schools inadvertently employed people with criminal backgrounds, particularly sex offenders.

Chairwoman of the End Child Sex Abuse Foundation, Josephine Siao Fong-fong, backed the call for criminal record checks.

'The government should come up with a system that could help people in authority to hire safe employees,' she said. The organisation supported calls for the government to establish a central register of sex offenders such as those used in the UK, US, France and South Korea.

Emily Lau Wai-hing, a member of Legco's education panel, said: 'I think the authorities should consider this because it would provide better safeguards.'

Priscilla Lui Tsang Sun-kai, director of Against Child Abuse, said it was difficult to know the extent of abuse by teachers and others at schools as cases often went unreported. 'What we see is the tip of the iceberg,' she said.

The law requires teaching applicants to declare any criminal convictions. It is an offence not to do so.

Schools are not able to check a job applicant's criminal record. They can check a teacher's registration and professional record with the EMB, but the bureau does not keep records on non-teaching staff.

An EMB spokesman acknowledged the calls for change. 'If there is such a proposal, we are open-minded and we think that the centralised system, if established, should comply with existing law, especially on protection of personal data,' he said.

He added that the EMB monitored court cases involving teachers and that 'under normal circumstances' teachers convicted of sex offences would be deregistered.

The English Schools Foundation also supports allowing schools access to the criminal records of prospective teachers and staff.

Education development director Graham Ranger said the ESF employed about 80 per cent of its teachers from Australia and the UK, where criminal checks covered all people working with children.

'I would feel more comfortable if we were able to check a police record but we're particularly thorough on checks with referees,' Mr Ranger said.

'I think in Hong Kong it's a really significant problem. We have talked to the EMB about it in the past but we haven't managed to make any inroads.'

A review of 859 calls to End Child Sex Abuse's helpline between June 1999 and December 2001 found schools were the third most common location for sex offences, after the home and homes of relatives.

Outrage - We Say, E4