| StorageSite | UCL Institute of Education |
| Description | Comprises papers regarding the GTCE's regulation role, including its code of conduct and practice for registered teachers.
Records regarding regulation procedure:
Example hypothetical cases used during training for individuals who would sit on the hearing panels
Procedures for referring cases of incompetence,
Guidance for witnesses and teachers who were subject to the GTCE's discplinary procedures
Guidance for members of the disciplinary committee (from July 2010)
Discipline procedures - rules (from 2011)
Report on serious professional misconduct based on the GTCE's casework 2001-2011
No records of decisions made during hearings are held by the Archives
Various versions of the Code itself dating from 2002 to August 2010
Reports, research, background papers about the new Code published in 2009. Includes research on expectations of teachers, stakeholder analyses, drafts of the Code, comparisions with overseas and other UK regulatory bodies, and reports analysing consultation feedback |
| AdminHistory | The disciplinary powers of the GTCE, set out in the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, came into force from 28 February 2001. The Act set out and defined the four types of orders that the Council could make, specifically: reprimand; conditional registration order; suspension order; and prohibition order. These were to be applied against registered teachers found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct or serious professional incompetence, or to have been convicted of a relevant offence.
Employers of registered teachers dismissed for incompetence (or who resigned in circumstances meriting dismissal) had a duty to refer such cases to the GTCE. The police and courts were required to refer relevant criminal offences directly to the GTCE.
Before 20 January 2009, misconduct cases were referred not to the GTCE but to the government Department dealing with education, which retained cases relating to the safety and welfare of children and young persons under the age of 19 and forwarded others to the GTCE. From that date, when the Independent Safeguarding Authority took over responsibility for vetting and barring people working with children (and also vulnerable adults) from the DCSF and various other bodies, employers had a duty to refer cases of teacher misconduct that did not have a child protection element directly to the GTC.
The first hearing committee took place on 17 May 2002. Each committee comprised three people, of whom two were registered teachers. Initially all committee members were members of Council. In March 2007, a panel of 15 teachers and 10 others was appointed; on each committee, one member of that panel could sit, instead of a member of Council.
The Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 also empowered the Council to "issue, and from time to time revise, a code laying down standards of professional conduct and practice expected of registered teachers".
A 'Code of professional values and practice' was published in February 2002. It set out an affirmative list of functions that registered teachers performed. It was replaced on 1 November 2004 by the 'Code of Conduct and Practice for Registered Teachers', the explicit task of which was to set minimum standards for the regulation of the profession. The previous Code was renamed as the 'Statement' at that time.
During 2007, the Council began an exhaustive consultation on a replacement of the code and statement. This led to publication of a new Code that took effect on 1 October 2009. Rather than set out unacceptable behaviours, the 2009 Code established eight principles of conduct and practice. In this way, it was both an affirmative document of value in defining teacher professionalism, and a document against which unacceptable practice, competence or behaviour could be defined.
The Education Act 2011, in abolishing the GTCE, removed all national-level regulation save for those misconduct cases referred by the ISA, police, the public or employers to the Secretary of State. |