Johannesburg - It ended in tears for a Gauteng teacher who submitted a forged medical certificate to the principal to cover up her one-day absence.
Mary Magdalene Kirsten, who became a teacher in 2009, received her marching orders from the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) after being found guilty of dishonesty.
Her attempt to have the dismissal reversed by the Education Labour Relations Council on grounds that it was too harsh has flopped.
In a fresh ruling, arbitrator Livhu Nengovhela found that the decision to dismiss Kirsten was appropriate given the seriousness of her misconduct.
“The gravity of the misconduct is that it is about dishonesty in that the applicant falsified a medical certificate and presented it to the respondent (department) as a true medical certificate,” Nengovhela said.
“It is also important to note that the evidence tendered by the respondent that such an act of misconduct required planning, time and diligent work to alter the medical certificate in question. This means the actions by the applicant were premeditated and required skill.”
Nengovhela found in favour of GDE’s submissions.
The department’s representative told the arbitration, heard last month via Zoom, that Kirsten’s misconduct was serious in that it amounted to fraud and therefore warranted a dismissal.
The department submitted that the falsification of the medical certificate was premeditated.
Kirsten did not go to the doctor because she did not have the doctor’s consultation fees; she then amended the dates on an old medical certificate and submitted it.
The former teacher at Eureka special school in Vereeniging admitted to submitting a fake note on September 23, 2017.
She pleaded guilty at the disciplinary hearing. Kirsten maintained that she falsified the document before submitting it because she had no money to go to the doctor.
Dismissal was too harsh considering the circumstances, Kirsten argued. She believed that the department should have considered a corrective sanction.
Kirsten also wanted it considered a mitigating factor that after being charged in 2017, she worked for about 23 months without any issues of misconduct.
But, Nengovhela said, this was just due to the department’s tardiness and not too worse a mishap than her misconduct.
“The gravity of the misconduct cannot not have been mitigated by the tardiness of the respondent in handling the matter,” Nengovhela said.
Kirsten became one of several teachers shown the door each year for fraud.
The SA Council for Educators, which regulates the teaching profession, recorded 62 cases of fraud in 2019, its last annual report showed.
Many charged teachers faced the music over corporal punishment, verbal abuse, absenteeism, alcohol abuse and sexual misconducts.
Of the 765 cases reported against educators in 2018/19, 295 cases were for corporal punishment, 141 for improper conduct including alcohol abuse and absenteeism, 141 for verbal abuse and harassment and 93 for sexual abuse including rape and sexual assault.
The Star