School staff unions have started legal action alleging that the Teaching Regulation Agency is not complying with its public sector equality duty.
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), the NAHT school leaders’ union, the NEU and NASUWT teaching unions and the general union Community submitted a claim for judicial review at the High Court on 17 April.
The unions had sent a letter to education secretary Bridget Phillipson and the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) on 3 April, raising concerns about the Department for Education’s decision not to collect data on the protected characteristics of teachers referred to the TRA. The TRA is responsible for conducting hearings into allegations of teacher misconduct.
The unions said the DfE decision makes it impossible to evaluate how TRA practices and policies impact on teachers with different protected characteristics. Protected characteristics included sexual orientation, race, disability and age.
Teacher misconduct investigations questioned
Under the Equality Act 2010, the requires public authorities to have “due regard” to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity, and to foster good relations between people with and without protected characteristics.
Teaching unions said they are concerned that Black and minority ethnic teachers may be overrepresented in referrals to the TRA.
“There is a concern about the underlying reasons for such referrals and whether they stem from discriminatory stereotypes, such as inaccurately labelling the teachers’ behaviour as overly aggressive,” the unions said.
They also raised concerns that the TRA has investigated some LGBTQ+ teachers for alleged sexual misconduct where “there are no grounds for doing so at the referral stage”.
Teaching unions additionally said they are concerned that the TRA is investigating teachers “even when the allegations against them lack merit and are unsupported by evidence”, meaning that investigations are dropped before the hearing stage.
Investigations are very difficult for teachers, the unions said, and if Black and minority ethnic and LGBTQ+ teachers are overrepresented in referrals, they will be particularly affected by this.
The claim for judicial review was submitted after unions said they “did not receive a substantive response within the deadline” to the pre-action protocol letter sent on 3 April.
The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.
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