Some time ago the coalition government announced that the General Teaching Council (GTC) would be abolished in March. It emerged that it was to be replaced by the new Teaching Agency, an executive agency of the Department of Education to be headed by a Chief Executive who would report to one of the Department’s directors general. The CE will also be the Chief Accounting Officer accountable to parliament. Executive agency staff will be civil servants employed by the Department of Education.
Regrettably, teachers may face a regulatory farce. Education, like health and social care, is a major political football, and one fears that the temptation of ministers to intermeddle whenever there is a perceived political hot potato will be too much to resist.
Already the range of sanctions which the General Teaching council is able to impose (which include reprimand, a conditional registration order, suspension or removal) have been replaced with the single sanction of removal.
The TES reports that none of the 323 cases referred to the General teaching Council since August will be heard before its demise in March and none of the cases referred because of teaching ability will face any further action. Indeed, most of the cases referred since August are unlikely to meet the new higher criteria for investigation by the Teaching Agency and will not progress further. Furthermore, of the 292 outstanding cases referred to the General Teaching Council before August last year, only 30 have been scheduled for hearings and just 35 are being passed on to the Teaching Agency.
How does this square with the comments of Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, who stresses the importance of good teachers to the success of pupils and his desire to rid schools of incompetent teachers?
It is important that a regulator has a range of appropriate sanctions at its disposal for misconduct or impaired fitness to practise. Sanctions must be fair and they must be proportionate.
In future head teachers, who have the stress and accompanying difficulties caused by making referrals, will need to exercise judgment at the outset as to whether the conduct would justify removal by a panel. Undoubtedly, many will avoid the process and find another way. Conversely, when a fitness to practise panel has determined that the facts against an errant teacher have been proved, it will have the choice of barring the teacher or taking no action. How many teachers now face the prospect of being removed because a panel will fear it should be seen to be taking some rather than no action when, in fact, in the past a proportionate sanction may have been suspension or even less?
This is fertile ground for legal argument before the Administrative Court whose judges can expect to be kept very busy over the next two or three years. In the meantime, the teachers’ nightmare continues!
