BC’s Commissioner of Teacher Regulation has banned a former Kelowna teacher who used a forged document on a job application from obtaining a teaching certificate for 18 months. The sentence was handed down in the case of Nicola Julie Pendleton, who applied for a job at Lakeside School Kelowna in June 2018. Following an April ruling that found her guilty of professional misconduct. In releasing its decision on consequences, the panel that heard the case notes that this is the first case of unauthorized practice under the Teachers Act in BC. The woman was trained as a teacher in Australia and tried to obtain a professional certificate in that province. She was issued a conditional certificate on September 4, 2012, which expired on June 30, 2017. She was granted a one-year extension, but it expired on June 30, 2018. The commission alleges that when he applied for the job in June 2018 at Lakeside School, he provided a copy of a professional qualification certificate purported to have been issued by the Teacher Qualification Service. TQS, however, did not issue the certificate. Pendleton was hired at Lakeside on Aug. 30, 2018, and worked there until fall 2019, when the school learned she did not hold a professional certificate and that her conditional certificate had expired. “In this case, the respondent lawfully held a conditional certificate and her misrepresentations to obtain employment at Lakeside occurred within a few months in 2018. However, the panel finds that this conduct (representing that she held a professional certificate, when the conditional certificate was expiring and the falsification of a professional certificate to obtain employment) is reprehensible and undermines the integrity of the profession in this province,” the commission wrote. The panel calls Pendleton’s conduct grossly dishonest. Also considered aggravating factors were Pendleton’s lack of remorse and continued representation during a 2019-2020 investigation that she held a professional certificate long after her conditional certificate expired. The commissioner did not award costs in the case. Pendleton did not attend the findings hearing and did not submit any comments on the implications before the June 30, 2022 deadline.
