Education Minister Grace Portolesi divulged the information yesterday after The Australian reported parents were not told for seven months about a case involving a teacher in one of Adelaide's best-regarded government schools in the eastern suburbs.
Yesterday, the man appeared in court to face charges of aggravated indecent assault, two charges of being a person in authority having sex with a person under the age of 18 and one count of gross indecency.
Premier Jay Weatherill and Ms Portolesi are already under intense scrutiny over the government's alleged involvement in the cover-up of the rape of an eight-year-old girl at a primary school by a convicted pedophile who ran an out-of-hours care program.
The government has commissioned former Supreme Court judge Bruce Debelle to conduct an "independent" inquiry into why parents were kept in the dark for two years, with cabinet giving him royal commission powers.
Ms Portolesi -- who yesterday gave evidence at a closed hearing of the Debelle inquiry -- said the case raised publicly yesterday was one of five identified by a review she had ordered last month after controversy about the 2010 child-rape cover-up.
"The internal review process that occurred in the department following the situation at the western suburbs school determined that there were five other cases, and there were three where school communities should be advised," Ms Portolesi said.
She said charges had not been laid against anyone at the other two schools, so there was no need to inform those school communities.
Letters were mailed to parents at the eastern suburbs school yesterday afternoon to inform them of the matter.
This comes after the Education Department last night said the school's governing council was never told. A member of the school's governing council yesterday told The Weekend Australian he was not aware of the incident, and it had not been minuted in any meetings of the council this year.
"It's scary," he said.
Parents at two other schools will wait until next year to be told about assault allegations involving members of staff.
The minister has dodged questions in parliament about whether there was a policy in place to disclose such matters.
The Queensland Education Department was yesterday unable to say whether a school community was informed in instances of child sexual assault in that state.
In Victoria, the Education Department said it followed police advice on "appropriate communication with a school community", while in NSW a school community would not normally be advised of a teacher arrest because of privacy provisions.
Opposition education spokesman David Pisoni said Ms Portolesi should stand down from her portfolio while the Debelle inquiry investigated whether there were further incidents where a school community had not been informed.
Additional reporting: Verity Edwards
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