EmployeeScreenIQ

The lack of comprehensive employee background checks on teachers is creating problems for some in the United Arab Emirates.

Recently, a former UAE teacher was sent to jail in the United States after being accused of trying to coerce students into sexual situations. That event has caused schools and parents to begin calling for stricter background checks on foreign teachers.

According to an article by The National Newspaper, there are currently more than 16,500 expatriate teachers working in the UAE. However, many of those teachers are allowed to work with children with hardly any criminal background checks.

Many public and private schools offer tax-free salaries to teachers, who are often hired after only undergoing a simple Interpol check to make sure there is no international arrest warrant out for them.

"If a person has committed a crime in their home country and they have a criminal record, there is no way for us to know about that record unless there is an international warrant or the home country lodges their information internationally," Brig Gen Nasser al Minhali, acting director general of the federal Department of Naturalisation and Residency, said in the article.

"We fingerprint all the residents to ensure they do not have a criminal history, but that is only comparable with the data on our system and not everywhere else in the world, of course," he continued.

Many officials claim that it is difficult to enforce thorough background checks on teachers, as many have had extensive international experiences and diverse nationalities, and places like the United States and Canada don't always make criminal records available to other countries.

While schools in the UAE are expected to complete a background check on a new hire, the quality of those checks can greatly vary. Teachers in the UAE must submit a security clearance to the Ministry of Education, which is forwarded to the Ministry of Interior, which then conducts an Interpol check.

Labels: Employee background checks