Alfred Angelo Hickey - The Background

Corruption
VIT, The Department of Education, Vermont Secondary College I believe are corrupt. In my experience, education in Victoria, generally has little true interest in the student and their education. It has more interest in playing, to the politics of female teachers against gender equality law. In my case, I tried to reveal the problems common in Victorian Schools and generally. The bullying against me, is a travesty against education in Australia, and if the evidence can be shown, Victorian and Australian law has been broken by the principals, The Education Department, in particular: Tony Jacobs (Principal of Vermont secondary), Rod Williamson (Ex-Principal of Vermont Secondary), Carmel White (in charge of conduct and ethics) and Tony Bugden (GM Human Services DEECD) and possibly Susan Halliday (VIT Chair). Unfortunately these people seem complicit in what are multiple levels of disempowering and mis-representing myself. Every time I have rung Susan Halliday, she has refused to respond.

I have not been given a way to publicly express the facts and expose the lies and corruption at VIT, The Department of Education and from Principals in schools, in this case Vermont Secondary. It seems only fair, given that my name was splattered through the newspapers: The Sun, The Melbourne Observer, The Victorian Government Gazette and the Victorian Institute of Teaching online, as deregistered, that I should have the right, to put my account across.

You will see that there are clear discrepancies between the facts expressed in the hearing and the written outcome on the website. This must reveal that VIT is biassed against teachers in Victoria and further, has no interest in improving education in any real way. It denied me the benefit of the doubt, giving me no instrument to acquire evidence, I was forced to find flaws in their evidence and documents, depending also, on the few documents I dug up from my time at the school. The tribunal accepted vague hearsay, which was not investigated. Even the outcome, as biassed against me as it is, reveals that some teachers had conspired under influence, which is clear bullying. A lawyer told me this is clear.

But while this is a serious situation, they showed no interest or concern about this bullying, the tribunal at the hearing clearly incompetent and out of touch, with what is serious and what is not. This is further evidenced, in their manufactured allegation of psychological issues, in the absence of any real evidence. While they admit that I was mistreated, they then say this affected my performance, despite all evidence showing that my teaching and student work was exemplary and that when principals had randomly checked, there were no issues.

The claims made about my psychology, were made up- where is the evidence ? Any psychological reports. Yet I am forced to wait until Late October to get a psych report from one of "THEIR" preferred specialists, to be re-registered with VIT. Why ? Where is the evidence that I needed a psych report ? This was made up and irrelevant to the allegations. VIT, has clearly just become an instrument for principals to bully teachers, and make it easy to sack someone. This was the conclusion of a lawyer I spoke to a few weeks ago. This problem is emphasised when people like Carmel White and Tony Bugden (from the Deaprtment of education) were on the VIT committee that decided to put the case through to a hearing. This must be considered a conflict of interest.

The lawyers at VIT, generally said, they were surprised, this one ever went through. They were also surprised at the outcome, because they considered it a weak case against me.

Unable to afford representation, I had to battle against a $400 an hour barrister. I think I actually won the case. The conclusion of the hearing, was, "I can re-apply at any time to VIT." But VIT are trying to make it hard for me to re-apply. I believe this is because VIT is corrupt, though they claim almost amnesty under The VIT Act of Parliament, which they write on everything, this seems to give them the feeling, that they are above accountability and responsibility for the truth. have a look at the disciplinary case on the VIT Web site. For a profession so inundated with women, some schools having a 30:1 ration women to men, it seems odd that men are the majority of cases and are deregistered.

The corruption is evident in the failure of process. This has followed from the coordinators at vermont, who wrote a memo saying, they could not cope or deal with the Year 10s, one or two students which were aggressive, threatening and attacked me verbally, frequently and source of an allegation against me.

The principals, who have falsified minutes and more so, made up stories so that there are usually no times, dates, or events, just vague accusations.

The Background

I have been a committed teacher for the last 10 years and have searched for a permanent position since this time. Since then, I have moved from school to school, about 20 times. This is because I have been taking what has been promised as "possibility of permanency," but later find these to be contracts, because some teacher has taken sick leave or maternity leave. Despite clocking up so much teaching experience, when I came back to Australia, after being a manager in a school, I was forced to complete my Dip Ed, so that I could get VIT registration. Though teaching for over 6 years at the time, I was knocked back to graduate teacher status by the Department of Education, because they begin it, from the time you receive your degree, furthermore VIT, will only register you as a teacher if you have a degree in teaching. So I had to raise $5000 to complete my graduate diploma in education by correspondence, because no one would let me complete the one or two subjects required to complete my Diploma (trying to get someone to complete it over 5 years). Then I had to find a school to teach in, to get the Diploma. Despite extensive teaching experience, in many contexts, I was called and treated like a "graduate teacher," so i took humble pie, but what was concerning is that my achievements were not acknowledged, when I taught in schools. I also found teachers trying to undermine me to my own classes and students.

They would say things like, "he is just a fill in...temporary or supply." Which is not true. This is well known to be a way to get students to create trouble in a teacher's class, as they wont have to deal with that person next year, and they are not worthy of respect (its how schools work- like it or not- clearly something VIT is not going to stop). For example, teaching a student, I was corrected about a technique I taught the students, when the Photoshop technique was actually the correct- Industry and book way to approach the problem. A coordinator threw out one of my classes student work, before the end of term.

In 2007 at a meeting at Vermont Secondary College, I was offered a permanent position by the Assistant Principal Tony Jacobs, which he said, could not be made official at that time, because I was responding to a newspaper article, but he would make it happen early first term, with the standard probation period of three months. The Department of Education policy, was that a position must be advertised on the DEECT recruitment online system, to be offered as permanent. It actually had, and I had applied here earlier, but the school had either not received my application or overlooked it. Wolfgang my mentor at the school, said, none of the teachers on the system, had the necessary background for the position, yet I know my background, experience and education matched the role. Yet after the interview, he said that I was the best candidate for the position.

I went back to my previous school to announce the promise, where people were so happy, that this had happened. The Principal Kerry Dowsley told me, she had lobbied the Department of Education to get me a permanent position and had failed, trying to block a forced transfer of an excess teacher (who had a permanent position), from another school into hers.

After teaching at Vermont Secondary, for a few months, I realised the politics in the place was pretty dirty. A Christian (Presbyterian) teacher Sally, accused me of not putting away drawing boards, despite me not even using drawing boards with the students. Another teacher/coordinator (Alison Bate) a Buddhist, tried to claim that I moved class without informing her, yet I put a note on the door, told her about it and had informed the daily organiser- the school procedure. I have seen these tactics before, this is common politics in schools. I covered myself.

Each week I went to the school office and asked Tony Jacobs and the school manager how I was doing and if there was anything to improve. I did this for the three months and Tony always replied, "no complaints." The school manager said, "everything is according to plan." I also talked to the principal Rod Williamson, he said that the student's work was great and had received many positive comments about my work with the students.

So at the end of the three months I asked for a meeting to discuss my permanent position, as well as increment (yearly pay rise) which was due to me, at about that time. Then came the meeting during my lunchtime, where another face appeared, Harry Ruff.