The 9.883 teachers across Almeria will be busy filing paperwork after the Ministry of Education decided it would be a good idea to check that none of them are sexual predators.
The new requirement of a criminal record clean of sexual offences comes after a legislative change implemented on August 18. It took until now (the school year is well underway) for the Ed Min to decide how to implement the change.
Basically, teachers have to ask for a negative record from the new Registrar of Sexual Delinquents (negative is positive in this case). They have to certify that they have never been sentenced for any crime against sexual liberty or privacy, sexual abuse or aggression, exhibitionism, sexual provocation, prostitution, sexual exploitation, corruption of youths, or trafficking of human beings.
Quite what happens if the record comes back positive, I don’t know. Suspension on full pay, I imagine.
Another suggestion that teacher salaries be linked to the general pass rate of their students has been shot down by the unions. “It is not fair to link teachers salaries to the performance of a third party, in this case their students” sniffed a union rep on TV, apparently unaware of the irony contained within his statement.