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| AdminHistory | The committee was renamed as the communications working group in 2004.
The terms of reference for the committee were to:
- consider, and advise the Council on, all matters in respect of the communication between the Council, the teaching profession and all other partners and bodies relevant to the Council's work;
- advise the Resources and Planning Committee of the ICT implications of these communication requirements for inclusion in the planning of the Council's ICT strategy;
- advise the Council on its publicity, press and public relations policy and practices.
The Group also oversaw the strategy, planning and content of:
- the Council's Internet website development taking account of the needs and purposes of all Committees and Groups of the Council;
- consultations with the teaching profession and all other partners and bodies;
- information and communication made other than through the website.
It also advised the Resources and Planning Committee on budget requirements for this area of the GTCE's work.
Prior to its formal establishment on 1 September 2000, decisions on communications for the General Teaching Council for England were undertaken with the support of the communications team of the then Department for Education and Employment. The Education Act 2002 included a power for the GTCE to promote the teaching profession, specifically enabling the organisation of conferences and the publication of material.
Until early 2003, the policy and communications teams were combined within a unified directorate.
Support for specific functions was outsourced, most notably design, event management, print, market research, web hosting and parliamentary liaison, the contract for each of these being managed from the communications team. Press office work was handled in-house, with occasional freelance support.
A continuing programme of parliamentary liaison was in place from the establishment of the GTCE. This included the provision of briefing notes on a variety of topics and the holding of meetings at parliament, sponsored by a parliamentarian, at which teachers from across England had the opportunity to discuss their work on GTCE projects.
From the very start of the GTCE, a thorough-going national programme of meetings and conferences was set in train, the initial series named 'Teacher meetings' and designed to introduce the GTCE to teachers across the country. Many meetings were designed for stakeholder evidence-gathering to serve the GTCE's policy development work; certain of those were administered from the policy team rather than the communications team.
As part of the GTCE's engagement with trainee teachers, from 2007 meetings were offered to all teacher training establishments at which a GTCE speaker would lead a discussion on professionalism within teaching. This series expanded significantly in later years and continued to autumn 2011.
An early task for the holder of the first long-term design contract (commenced 1 April 2002) was to vary the design of the logotype and establish a thorough-going brand identity for the GTCE.
First steps in the creation of a GTCE magazine for teachers took place with a pilot edition entitled Teaching in autumn 2002. It should be noted that the terms of the GTCE's founding legislation meant that the GTCE could not garner commercial advertising for the magazine. Regular termly publication commenced in autumn 2003. Following market research, the magazine was relaunched in a smaller format in spring 2008, formally entitled Teaching: the GTC magazine. The spring 2010 edition was to be the last, the abolition announcement of 2 June 2010 rendering it inappropriate to despatch the otherwise-prepared summer 2010 magazine. In the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 terms, a simple leaflet was sent to teachers with information about abolition and its effects.
The web domain of the GTCE was www.gtce.org.uk, and for the Teacher Learning Academy the domain www.teacherlearningacademy.org.uk was used. The principal domain underwent a significant redesign to reflect an audience-led website and was launched in April 2009.
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