Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Australia: How to apply to be a volunteer in school

How does one volunteer in the public schools here? Actually the same procedures apply whether it is for pre-school, elementary, high school or in a religious setting such as Sunday School (if required to work with children under age of 18). It may differ from state to state, depending on what the state practices.

The Working With Children Check (WWCC) is a compulsory procedure that all individuals over the age of 18 has to undertake before working or performing services that has direct contact with children below the age of 18. Under the legislation in Australia, exemptions are given if the person volunteering to help out in the class is a parent of the child, but otherwise they would need to undertake a Working with Children Check prior to volunteering to the class, & or show evidence of a police check (for the state of Victoria).

Individual normally have to fill in an application form for the WWCC which is normally FREE for volunteers, but payable if for employment purposes. Registered teachers are also normally exempted from requiring a Working With Children Check if teaching at their own respective schools. Students under the age of 18 years also do not require a background or reference check unless if they were in the centre for purposes of completing a practicum (possible if enrolled in TAFE, or Open University study programs).

* Queensland: Blue Card (Working With Children Check) The charge for undertaking the check is abt 70 dollars for employment purposes, or free as a volunteeer under an association, or school.
* New South Wales: Working With Children Check (the background check is free & a new application has to be undertaken each time ).
* Victoria: Working With Children Check is free for Volunteers, but abt 70 dollars for employment purposes. A Police Check is also part of the requirement in many circumstances and valid for about every six months (not sure how long though).
* For other states in Australia, please check or Google it.

2 comments:

John JY Wong said...

Hello!

I found your blog very interesting ... I couldn't read ALL the articles (there were quite a fair number of them!), but those which I did were pretty informative.

I stumbled upon your blog while doing a Google on Teacher salary. Obviously, I'm running a Kindergarten in KL, and was doing research online.

Oh, and I'm pretty keen to meet up with fellow kindergarten operators who would like to share information .. most of those I've met are "not interested" in sharing info (sigh, like most other business operators too). So if anybody is keen, drop me an e-mail: joonyip@pd.jaring.my

Cheers!

P.S. BTW this is NOT a SPAM post! ^_^

CheaYee said...

Hellloo John Wong,

G'day from Sydney... just wondering, which among the articles/ or entries was it that you found interesting/ or informative?

Yes, I do realise that "teacher salary" is something that a lot of people do research on, which is why I included it here. LOL!

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