The expansion of the teacher misconduct agency’s power to issue lifetime bans to include teachers in the FE sector has been called into question amid longstanding “failures” to address stale cases going back up to eight years.
Hundreds of thousands of post-16 teachers and assessors will fall under the scope of misconduct investigations through the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) for the first time under laws being introduced through the children’s wellbeing and schools bill.
FE leaders have welcomed the move to help colleges and providers with the “most complex” cases, but sceptics warn the TRA cannot handle the extra powers as it struggles to manage its current caseload, leaving teachers “in limbo” for two years on average.
An investigation by FE Week’s sister publication Schools Week last year revealed that Covid backlogs caused two teachers to be left in the lurch for eight years, suffering “psychological damage” and a “fear of public humiliation”, as they waited for their misconduct cases to be concluded.
The TRA also recently admitted to breaching a headteacher’s human rights by taking six years on her case.
The agency’s latest accounts show that 31 per cent of its 1,042 active cases were first referred more than two years ago.
The TRA said that it had injected more funding to recruit staff and spent £4 million more on legal services to shave waiting times down from 113 weeks on average in 2022-23 to 102 weeks in 2023-24. It still failed to hit its target to conclude cases within 52 weeks from receiving the referral.
Andrew Faux, of Lawyers for Teachers, whose caseload includes cases dating back five years, told FE Week: “Given their given failure to deal with some very stale cases, it’s surprising that they’re choosing to expand their remit at this moment.”
“I’m sceptical about the capacity of the organisation,” he added. “It’s going to be a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”
The agency has also been bogged down with rising numbers of parents making complaints. Last year it received 1,684 teacher misconduct referrals, mostly from the public. The agency subsequently dismissed 1,059 of the referrals.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders union, called for a “better mechanism” for handling parents’ complaints and clearly distinguishing between cases for the TRA to investigate, and those that should go through a college’s own complaints procedures.
Faux added: “They should target better and concentrate on serious misconduct the public would expect to be acted on, and not waste time on more trivial allegations, because they’re not going to get more money, I don’t imagine.”
What does the TRA do?
The TRA is an executive agency of Department for Education that investigates cases of serious teacher misconduct and issues sanctions, including lifetime bans known as prohibition orders.
Once the TRA receives a referral, a professional conduct panel carries out public hearings on whether there has been unacceptable professional conduct, such as sexual harassment, failure to protect pupils’ safety, fraud or violent behaviour. They then recommend whether to issue a prohibition order.
The prohibition order bans individuals from carrying out teaching work, usually for life. Their name would also appear on the “prohibited list” for employers, local authorities and teacher supply agencies to be able to check.
Outcomes of the TRA’s misconduct panels are made public, even when no prohibition order is made.
FE teachers haven’t been regulated since 2012, when they were under the remit of the Institute for Learning (IfL) and their compulsory requirement to register as an IfL member was repealed. Independent reviewers at the time called for an “appropriate government body” to take on the responsibility of keeping a register of FE misconduct.
What does the schools bill propose?
The Department for Education revealed two years ago that it planned to extend TRA powers to post-16 education and training “when a suitable legislative opportunity becomes available”.
The changes seek to protect and safeguard all students under the age of 19 by the teacher misconduct regime.
About 200,000 teachers in FE colleges, independent training providers, specialist SEND colleges and online providers are to fall in its scope.
The draft law also seeks to extend powers to cover individuals who commit serious misconduct “when not employed as a teacher, but who have at any time carried out teaching work” as the current legislation only allows investigations into current teachers.
Clare Howard, chief executive of Natspec, a membership association for specialist providers to students with learning difficulties and disabilities, said she agreed with the move to include specialist college teachers “in principle” but her concern would be about “the timeliness of such investigations”.
“It will need considerably more resources if it is to be able to take on cases from the FE sector as well – and deal with them in a timely fashion,” she added.
The Association of Colleges’ senior policy manager, David Holloway, told FE Week that college HR teams might welcome external support, “especially with the most complex cases”.
He added: “Whilst the bill is clear that colleges will fall within the scope of existing TRA processes, it is unclear how this expansion of scope will be managed, so we hope that DfE will engage with colleges to make sure that the detail is right for what is, after all, a very different sector.”
The Department for Education was contacted for comment.
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