part of an educational programme of a school under an arrangement mentioned in the School Education Act 1999 s 24(1); and
prescribed for the purposes of this definition;55 or
a person employed by the chief executive officer as defined in the Young Offenders Act 1994 s 3 to teach detainees at a detention centre.
Therefore, mandated reporters among the teaching profession included registered teachers, those appointed as teaching staff at community kindergartens, instructors in vocational education programs and home schooling programmes, and those who teach in youth detention centres. However, under the original legislation, employees of child care services who do not teach at that centre were not (and still are not) mandated reporters.56
Arguably, the original definition would have included as mandated reporters those who were registered teachers working in child care centres. However, at the time, the Act did not expressly include childcare teachers as mandated reporters, and ambiguity arose because the WACTA regulates teaching in schools, rather than child care centres. Amendment in 2012 removed any doubt: those who teach in child care services are now clearly included as mandated reporters. Since 2012, there is no doubt that all those who teach in an ‘educational venue’ must be registered and so fall within the CCSA definition of ‘teacher’; since child care centres are now defined as educational venues (see below), and are mandated reporters in that capacity. However, in the child care context, those who simply provide care to children are not ‘teachers’ and so are not mandated reporters.
