In the five years to fiscal 2019, a total of 1,030 public school teachers were disciplined for indecent acts or sexual harassment, with about half of these incidents targeting students or graduates of the teacher's school, a nationwide survey by The Yomiuri Shimbun found.
The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry is seeking legal changes and operational responses so that such teachers are not sent back to the classroom without rehabilitation, but its efforts face many obstacles.
-- False reports, name changes
"I deeply apologize for betraying the trust of the people of the prefecture," Misako Yoshino, deputy director of the Chiba prefectural board of education, said before bowing deeply at the start of a press conference explaining the disciplinary actions taken against eight people.
Four of them were fired as punishment for indecent acts against students they taught. Arrests were made in some cases.
The number of teachers punished for indecent acts has increased recently. According to the ministry, a record 282 teachers were disciplined for indecent acts or sexual harassment in fiscal 2018, of which 163 teachers were fired as punishment. This makes up for about 70 percent of the 231 disciplinary dismissals that year.
When teachers are fired for disciplinary reasons, the revocation of their teacher's license is published in Kanpo, the government's official publication.
The ministry has been collecting data from Kanpo since fiscal 2018 and providing it to boards of education via a search tool they can use for hiring. Inputting a name shows whether the person has previously been fired for bad conduct.
The Educational Personnel Certification Law stipulates that a teacher's license can be re-acquired three years after a disciplinary dismissal. The search tool currently only covers three years, but next year this is to be extended to 40 years.
"That is the maximum measure that can be taken at this time," a senior ministry official said.
The extended period would make it possible to check the disciplinary dismissal record of the entire careers of most teachers currently working.
The ministry is considering other measures, such as making people wait longer before they can re-acquire a teacher's license.
-- No rehabilitation
The search period is being extended to 40 years because some teachers who were fired for indecent acts have hidden their disciplinary history, gotten other teaching jobs and committed more acts of indecency.
In May 2018, the Saitama municipal board of education fired a male substitute teacher as punishment for an indecent act against a female high school student.
When the board investigated, it discovered the substitute teacher had been fired by the Toyama prefectural board of education for committing an obscene act against a female high school student in 2002. The substitute teacher had been hired in 2017, but did not include his punishment history on his resume.
"If we had had the punishment history, it could have been used during hiring," the person in charge of the matter at the board of education said.
In November 2014, the Tokyo metropolitan board of education found that a male teacher at a public elementary school had been fired for an indecent act against a girl in another prefecture, but provided false information during the hiring process, including saying he had "voluntary resigned" from that job. The teacher was fired for bad conduct in February 2015.
-- Information-sharing key
While expanding the search tool would give access to dismissal histories, challenges remain.
The search tool does not give the reason for the dismissal, so applicants may still be able to hide incidents, such as by saying they were let go for drunk driving.
Even if the board of education doing the hiring tries to check the history, the board that administered the punishment could refuse to share information for personal privacy reasons, according to a member of a prefectural board of education in east Japan.
A ministry official said it would be difficult to add the reason for the punishment to the search tool, due to the lack of a legal basis.
Sakura Kamitani, a lawyer who is an expert on sex crimes, said,: "Teachers who have been dismissed for disciplinary reasons may not show up in searches because they got married or changed their names. Even if teachers are fired for bad conduct, they can obtain a new teacher's license after three years due to consideration for the freedom to choose one's occupation. This needs to be dealt with quickly."
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
