Review of the General Teaching Council

Introduction

This report follows a request in June 2010 from the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) for the Professional Standards Authority (then CHRE) to undertake an independent review of its current conduct function in cases involving allegations of racism. The review was carried out in July and August 2010 and included examination of the eleven cases involving allegations of racism that the GTCE has dealt with during its lifetime.

CHRE undertakes annual performance reviews of the nine health professional regulatory bodies in the UK. We publish the outcome of those reviews annually to Parliament and the devolved administrations in the UK.

Although CHRE has no statutory oversight of the GTCE, we considered that it would be valuable to undertake this review. We believed there would be benefits to the GTCE in having an independent assessment benchmarking their performance in relation to health professional regulators in the UK, and CHRE would learn about approaches to regulation and regulatory practice in a different sector. This could be shared with regulatory bodies in the UK and help CHRE in its work in defining excellence in regulatory practice.

We are very grateful to the Chair and Chief Executive of the GTCE and its staff for their help in enabling us to undertake this review. They readily provided all the information requested. We also wish to thank the Equality and Human Rights Commission for its advice during the review.