School Law 2019: Educate, Enlighten, Inform
Issues covered include: Parents, legal disasters, Privacy law, mental and physical health of staff, misconduct, disability and discrimination obligations, race, sex and gender identity, children with physical and learning disabilities
Description
One mistake and you may find your school besieged by angry parents, your inbox bursting with emails from lawyers, your calendar filled with court dates, and your students caught in the middle. Avoid the many legal risks facing schools with practical guides and indispensable legal insights into problematic parents, staff snafus, privacy risks and discrimination dangers.
Attend and earn 6 CPD points in Competency Area 4: Substantive Law
This conference was recorded in WA on 12 June 2019
Session 1
Teacher Knows Best – How to Avert Legal Disaster
Chair: Karen Prendergast, Principal, Lumen Christi College
9.00am to 10.00am: Parents Behaving Badly: What you can and Cannot say
- Tips for staff in managing difficult, aggressive or abusive parents
- Protecting staff and the school community
- How to manage the difficult parent
- When and how to ban a parent from coming on to the school grounds
- Sports rage and parental codes of conduct
- Parents in conflict with principals over teachers incompetence
Presented by Rochelle Airey, Senior Associate, HWL Ebsworth
10.00am to 11.00am: Privacy Law: Is Your School Prepared?
Your school could face penalties of up to $1.8 million if it fails to protect the privacy of its students, parents, volunteers and staff. Are you 100% prepared?
- Personal information, school records, admissions, conduct: Who owns what?
- Privacy and duty of care: balancing competing obligations
- Unique school issues: mobile phones, laptops and the portability of these items
- Legal obligations, including mandatory reporting of breaches and penalties
- Drug testing, weapons, violence
- Intellectual property for schools explained
Presented by Leslie Buchbinder, Director, Bowen Buchbinder, Vilensky
11.00am to 11.15am Morning Tea
11.15am to 12.15pm: Managing Staff Mental and Physical Health
- When can someone be retired on the grounds of ill health?
- What does it mean to say that a person is unable to perform the inherent requirements of a position?
- What are fair processes and practices to ensure best practice in fitness for work matters?
- How do employers accommodate impairments in the workplace to ensure someone is reasonably able to perform the inherent requirements of a position?
- When is it fair to say you cannot accommodate an employee’s impairment?
- Things to be cautious about: discrimination claims and unfair dismissal claims!
Presented by Liz Carbone, Advocate, The State School Teachers’ Union of W.A. (Inc.)
12.15pm to 1.15pm: Effectively Managing Substandard Performance and Inappropriate Conduct/Misconduct
- What to do when substandard performance happens
- How to improve performance and what to do if performance doesn’t improve
- What is misconduct or inappropriate conduct, and what amounts to serious misconduct?
- When can employment be terminated?
Presented by Murray Thornhill, Director and Gemma Wheeler-Carver, Solicitor, HHG Legal Group
Session 2
Meeting Your Disability and Discrimination Obligations
Chair: Dr Julie Harris, Director of Teaching and Learning, Guildford Grammar School
2.00pm to 2.45pm: Minimising the Risks for Staff and Students Regarding Race, Sex and Gender Identity Discrimination
- Examining emerging issues for schools including:
- Racial and sexual harassment
- Sport and transgender students
- School uniforms: sex and LGBTIQ discrimination
Presented by Allan Macdonald, Senior Legal Officer, Equal Opportunity Commission
2.45pm to 3.30pm: Religious Educational Institutions and Sex Discrimination
Consider the Discrimination Free Schools Bill 2018 and the proposed removal of religious exemptions under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (SDA)
- The impact (if any) of a ‘discrimination exemption removal’ on religious schools’ existing policies and procedures for:
- Teacher recruitment, disciplinary processes, and termination
- Religious moral values: Are these inherent requirements of a teacher’s job?
- Acceptable hiring and firing processes
- Practical group discussions with a focus on gender identity and:
- Acceptable non-discriminatory hiring practices descriptions
- Acceptable non-discriminatory firing practices
Presented by Agnes McKay, Principal, Agnes McKay Law Practice
3.30pm to 4.15pm: Supporting Children with Physical or Learning Disabilities: Obligations and Best Practice
- Teacher and school obligations toward students with disabilities
- Case studies of the implementation of services and responses for students with disabilities
- Practical tools that your school needs to have in place
Presented by Professor Joan Squelch, Dean, School of Law, University of Notre Dame
Venue
Parmelia Hilton
Level 1, Meeting Room, 14 Mill Street
Perth 6000
WA
Australia