Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I welcome from the Department of Education Mark Bailey, the director of education workforce, and Alan Boyd, the head of the teacher education team. Thank you for joining us to give the Committee an initial briefing on the proposed legislation. There is probably no real value in my setting out too much context — you will do that in your briefing — so I will hand over to you for your presentation. I ask that it be up to 10 minutes. After that, we will move on to questions from Committee members. We will aim to keep each enquiry from each member at around the five-minute mark so that we can get through all queries.

Mr Mark Bailey (Department of Education): Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon, members. We have already been introduced, but I will add that Alan is the head of the sponsor branch that is responsible for the General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (GTCNI), so he is over the detail.

I thank the Committee for the opportunity to update it on the Department's plans to reform the General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland and the progress that we are making on introducing a Bill to deliver the changes. In December 2021, following an independent review of the performance of the GTCNI's leadership council, the then Minister of Education, Michelle McIlveen, announced her intention to close and replace the GTCNI, which was a step that required amendments to existing primary legislation. That decision followed a lengthy period of significant dysfunction and underperformance by the leadership council, including two periods spent in special measures. It also reflected the review's scathing assessment of the board and its committees, which found systemic leadership failures, with toxic and irredeemably broken internal working relationships that undermined all aspects of its operation. As a result, the Minister stood down the council at that time.

Since 2021, under interim leadership arrangements and with departmental oversight, the GTCNI has made dramatic operational improvements, particularly on teacher registration and governance. Engagement with the profession has also confirmed broad support for the retention of all the GTCNI's core functions. That suggests that closing the GTCNI would cause the Department to have to establish unnecessarily a new, functionally identical body. Although a wide range of options was considered, the business case analysis concluded that reforming the existing body was the best way in which to deliver the desired functions at the lowest cost and with the lowest risk to the ongoing smooth delivery of those functions. For those reasons, earlier this year, the Minister agreed to a modification of the Department's preferred approach, confirming that the GTCNI would be retained and reformed. Reforming the GTCNI still requires legislative changes, so the Department has drafted a suitable Bill to deliver those changes.

Alan will outline the Bill's key features.

Mr Alan Boyd (Department of Education): Thank you, Mark. The first major change that the Bill will introduce will be to the body's leadership and governance arrangements. Its current 33-member council will be replaced by a streamlined 12-member board, and every member of that board will in future be appointed through a public appointments process that will shortlist applicants based on the skills and experience that they can bring to the role and on their ability to contribute to the provision of strategic direction, strong governance and oversight of the GTCNI. Importantly, half the positions on the new board will be filled by currently registered teachers. That will ensure that the profession is still strongly represented within the body. The Bill will also address some long-standing legislative weaknesses that, to date, have hampered the GTCNI's ability to regulate the profession effectively.

It will introduce independent investigatory and fitness-to-practice panels. It will establish disciplinary sanctions, ranging from reprimands to suspension or prohibition orders. Those will ensure that it can take fair and proportionate action in any case in which unacceptable professional conduct or serious professional incompetence has been confirmed. The Bill will clarify the GTCNI's ability to share information with other teaching regulators in the UK and in the Republic of Ireland and will allow it to act on conduct referrals from the public, but only if the school's and employer's processes have been exhausted.

The Bill will create two criminal offences. It will make it an offence for a teacher or an individual with a deliberate intent to deceive to claim falsely to hold GTCNI registration or to provide false or misleading information to the GTCNI when seeking to obtain teacher registration. Those offences, although the number of cases to which they will ever apply is small, will help safeguard the integrity of the teaching workforce. For the same reason, and separate from the Bill itself, we are working with colleagues in the Department of Justice to establish a mechanism that will allow the GTCNI to obtain and use AccessNI disclosures as part of its assessment of applicants' fundamental fitness to teach.

The Bill will introduce two powers that will not be activated immediately but that are designed to support the profession in the medium to long term. First, we intend to allow for a new category of provisional registration for teachers whose qualifications are judged to have minor deficits against the GTCNI's qualification rules. That could help prevent overly rigid application of those rules from becoming a barrier to entry into the profession. It may even, in providing greater flexibility, contribute in some small way to addressing some subject-specific teacher shortages, of which we are aware. Although that additional flexibility would need to be implemented carefully, we believe that it could be done without compromising the high standards that we expect from all teachers.

Secondly, the Bill will provide a power allowing for the periodic revalidation of every teacher's registration with the GTCNI. That will require all teachers to demonstrate periodically their continuing participation in teacher professional learning. If that power is brought into effect, it will can ensure that the skills of every teacher remain up to date and informed by developments in good practice and research throughout their careers, which, again, will enhance the quality of our teaching workforce.

Both are significant changes, so, before either provision is commenced, the Department has committed to careful consultation with teachers and other education stakeholders.

Mr Bailey: Thank you, Alan. As for the next steps, the Minister has approved the draft Bill and its supporting documents. On Monday, a short explanatory video was circulated to all teachers. It is really an update for them, and it invites feedback on the draft Bill should they wish to provide any. Subject to final Attorney General and Executive approval, we are aiming to see the Bill introduced in the Assembly shortly after the upcoming Halloween recess, hopefully following one of the Executive meetings in November. Thank you for your attention. We are now happy to take any questions that members may have.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you. I am conscious as we start this evidence session that the GTCNI is perhaps not a body that any member of the public who is tuning in is aware of. Part of the reason that the legislation is needed is possibly that a lot of teachers are not completely clear about what the GTCNI does. I will start with a question on that so that I am clear in my mind.

Your briefing, which was helpful and thorough, set out the functions of the GTCNI and covered the registering and regulation of the teaching profession. That seems clear. You then went on to talk, however, about training, career development, performance management and teaching standards. To my mind, a lot of that stuff on training, career development and standards would happen at school level, under the school leadership and board of governor accountability structures. How does the GTCNI's role in that space interacts with what happens at school level? Where do those functions sit?

Mr Bailey: I can discuss some of that, and Alan may then want to add to what I say. As with any professional body, the GTCNI's role is very much to look at how the whole profession is promoted and to ensure that everyone in the profession meets certain standards. That involves professional development and training. You are absolutely right to say, Chair, that the actual practicality of training happens at a local level, but it is about setting the standards and expectations for that. A provision that we are putting in the Bill is a requirement for there to be continuing professional development (CPD). There is therefore a whole aspect there for which a professional body should be responsible, and the GTCNI has not been of late. Alan, do you want to add anything? There is certainly a clear role there for the GTCNI, however.

Mr Boyd: The GTCNI had been actively involved in that area. It had developed and published a set of professional standards and competencies for the profession. Those standards are now recognised as being dated and in need of a refresh, but it was felt that it was important that the professional body set those standards rather than have the Department rush in to dictate them. The standards should be informed and controlled by the profession itself, which is why we feel that it has a key role to play in those areas. That role is distinct from the role of trade unions. It is about professional standards and an adherence to them, rather than about any of the nuts and bolts of what constitutes a fair day's work.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is a helpful clarification. Forgive my lack of knowledge on that aspect.

I will come on to how the board's membership is likely to be determined. You talked about having six teaching members and six non-teaching members. Previously, the teaching members ended up in the role by way of an election process. Was that considered? I suppose that I am really just thinking about ensuring that the teaching professionals on the board are representative of the teaching community.

Mr Bailey: You are absolutely right. The teaching members have to be representative of the community on the board. To go back to the original issues that there were with the council, and we included this in our paper, there was a Baker Tilly Mooney Moore (BTMM) report — it is hard to remember all the names — that was very helpful in informing the way forward. It was very clear from that report that, because of the toxic make-up of the relationships, something very different had to happen in the future. There was therefore a clear recommendation in there that the board should be appointed through a process of public appointments. That has been reinforced through our engagement with the Commissioner for Public Appointments for Northern Ireland (CPANI). We have engaged with her throughout the Bill's development process. We have therefore received very strong advice that it is important that the board go through a public appointments process in order to ensure that the right skills and experience are represented on that board.

We absolutely agree that there has to be appropriate representation of teachers on the board. The plan that we are proposing through the Bill is that the board will have 12 members, six of whom must be GTCNI-registered. Half the make-up of the board must therefore be registered teachers in order to ensure that there is appropriate representation. That is the background to the approach that is being taken. Alan, do you have anything that you wish to add?

Mr Boyd: The only thing that I will add is that, going back to some of the problems that were highlighted in the independent review, there was agreement, certainly among some of the elected members in the feedback that they provided to the consultants, that they did not have a familiarity with and knowledge of concepts to do with public-sector governance, accountability, risk management and business planning to enable them to contribute effectively to directing the board. Again, we will look to tackle those things in the round through a public appointments process. The report also stated that it would be important for future board members to be adequately supported by the Department and to receive appropriate induction training upon taking up their role. We will look to return to that with the GTCNI as we move towards making appointments, but that is a level of detail that is far below what we are considering in the Bill.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I want to give members the opportunity to come in, so I have just one final question. There is probably not a huge amount else that I want to ask other than about the feedback that I hear from teachers, which is that they do not really understand what they get back from the GTCNI for the fee that they pay every year.

How can you assure the Committee that, with potentially an increased fee, which is referenced there, teachers will feel that they are getting a representative and regulatory body that delivers something tangible for them as professionals?

Mr Bailey: That is a fair comment, Chair. We still regularly get correspondence saying, "Why am I paying £44 a year, and what benefit am I getting for it?" In fact, some people are saying that the organisation does not even exist. Some teachers do not even realise that GTCNI still exists as a registering body. There is undoubtedly a case that we have to promote — "sell" is maybe the wrong word, but definitely "demonstrate" — the benefits of the body. We have engaged with the teaching profession throughout all of this. There was a public consultation in 2022, but there was also direct engagement with teachers in order to get their input and get to the stage that we are at. We have provided updates on two occasions and a third just this week. It was limited initially, because the original consultation in early 2023 was during a time of action short of strike, and we got limited feedback. In early 2024, we went out with a further consultation and a short video. We got much better feedback at that stage; there were around 1,200 responses. So there is some level of understanding, and we had good feedback that the majority were in support of a professional body.

Your comments are valid. I have talked to Ian Gallagher, who is the interim CEO of GTCNI, and we both recognise that we have a job to do. The promotion and development of the Bill, as it goes through the Assembly, will help us to demonstrate the requirements. No teacher would argue with the need for better regulation processes as well as more training and development and professional standards. We are very alive to your points, and we have a plan in place to ensure that, as the Bill progresses, teachers will be aware of the benefits that it presents.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is helpful. If we take the example of the General Medical Council (GMC), even the public have a clear sense of what that body does, what its role is and that is has some teeth, and they understand its purpose. We are not there with GTCNI at the moment, but it is encouraging to hear that you are aware of the job of work to make that case to the profession.

Mr Baker: Thank you. You mentioned the Baker Tilly Mooney Moore review, which said that GTCNI was broken. What has significantly changed from one Minister going with that recommendation to dissolve the body to another Minister now saying that it should be reformed?

Mr Bailey: That is a fair question. That has happened over a four-year period. Michelle McIlveen decided to close the organisation in 2021, whereas the current Education Minister has agreed that we should reform it in 2025. A significant amount of work has happened during that four-year period, primarily in the organisation itself. It is fundamentally different from what it was four years ago. It has a new interim chief executive and accounting officer. Under his leadership, a settled staffing structure is in place, and the organisation is building an experienced staff. Teacher registration has gone through a number of radical improvements. There is a new teacher registration system. In the past, newly qualified teachers had a lot of issues and complaints about not being registered quickly enough. That has changed, particularly in the past year or two since the new system came in.

The financial management and governance controls are a world apart from where they were. For example, there were a multitude of internal audit recommendations outstanding when the new chief executive went in. He and his team have reduced those to a very small number. Internal audit has said that the organisation, rather than being unsatisfactory, now has a "limited" recommendation, and it is only limited on the basis that GTCNI needs a board in place. That is the one thing that is stopping it from being classed as "satisfactory" from an audit point of view. Of course, we need the legislation for that.

Finally, there were two terms of special measures, but the organisation was formally brought out of special measures last December because it has completely transformed. If we closed the organisation and opened another one, a raft of work and public money would be required to shut down one organisation, open another, and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) transfer staff out of one pension scheme and into another. You would be opening a functionally identical organisation. That is why that decision was taken. There were such a number of changes in those four years that it made much more sense to reform the organisation, which is why we have changed the approach.

Mr Baker: One of the recommendations that you are going forward with is reducing the number of board members from 33 to 12. You said that six of them will be from the teaching profession. Who makes up the other six, and how will you ensure that it is not Department-led?

Mr Bailey: I will make a couple of comments, and Alan might pick up on that too. It will be an independent public appointments process. We will clearly have to set out the skills and experience required. Alan mentioned some of those earlier around governance, financial controls and some practical things that are not necessarily teaching profession skills; they are more organisational-type skills. There will be very clear job descriptions and person specs for those individuals. They will need to satisfy those criteria and come through that process. We will, as I said, have reserved places for those six registered teachers. They will still have to demonstrate the skills required. It is a much more robust process to ensure that the right individuals are in there with the right skills.

Alan, is there anything that you want to add?

Mr Boyd: Not particularly. It is inherent in public appointments that you produce a skills set. CPANI will assess and shortlist candidates who achieve the necessary standard. It is, again, inherent in public appointments processes that, ultimately, those will go forward for consideration and decision by the Minister. That is the nature of that beast. CPANI has told us that this system has proved very effective; it is used in the appointment of almost all non-departmental public body (NDPB) boards throughout Northern Ireland, and it has worked well. Accepting that there is that concern, we still believe that that is the most robust way in which to produce a balanced board that, across the piece, has the right mix of skills in all areas to prove effective.

Mr Baker: As part of the 2021 review, there was criticism of the Department's oversight. What learning has the Department had in that regard? How do you see that changing in the new model?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Can we have a brief answer, if possible, on that one?

Mr Bailey: What happened back in 2021 was a wake-up call for everyone. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. That, clearly, is what happened back then. In response to that, there has been a radical transformation in governance and control in the past four years. There is no way that that could be repeated, from a departmental point of view. It has had that much attention. In addition, once we get a new board in place, that does not mean that the Department absolves itself of all of its responsibilities; it will still be the sponsor body and there will be oversight of that new arm's-length body (ALB), in the same way that there is with all of the other departmental ALBs.

Mr Baker: Have the unions been involved in the process?

Mr Bailey: That is a very valid question. I am involved in engaging with the unions all the time about teachers' pay and terms and conditions. We have very good relationships with them. GTCNI has a lot of history and baggage. You probably know this, but I am being upfront: the unions do not support the approach to public appointments. They want to be able to nominate members from the unions. We understand that, but we still believe that this is the right approach. We have been meeting the unions regularly to update them. We have met them two or three times this year, as recently as a couple of weeks ago. They get sight of what we are going to issue to teachers in advance. Although they have reservations about certain elements, we have had very positive engagement with them in recent months. I think that that has been helpful for them; it has certainly been helpful for us.

Mr Boyd: Another strength of the public appointments process is that every board member will be subject to an annual performance review. Therefore, there will be early sight of, for want of better terminology, anyone who is going a little maverick and disruptive in the organisation. There will be a much stronger means for the Department to intervene at an early stage and address that problem, rather than letting it escalate to the point where the whole operation of the council is thrown into disruption again.

Mrs Mason: Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta has completed two excellent pieces of research recently, and I want to bring this to what will happen in the future. It launched one of the pieces of research here, and we heard directly from Irish-medium teachers about the realities and difficulties that they face. The research showed clearly that very specific knowledge and a very specific set of skills are needed when you teach through the medium of Irish and when you teach academic subjects through an additional language. Is that something that you are aware of? Are you aware of that research? Are there any guarantees, or what is being done in any future guidance that will come down from GTCNI on that?

Mr Bailey: I was at that launch in the Long Gallery last week or the week before, so we are fully aware of a lot of that research. I am involved with the teaching unions around teacher workload. There is a very specific issue there in the Irish-medium sector. That definitely will be taken account of. As Alan said, the competences need to be updated, and this is quite timely because there is an opportunity to reflect some of the special interest areas, for want of a better term. You need to be careful when you are doing general competences. You cannot make them so specific to every subject that they become too unwieldy. However, that is definitely an area that is on our radar, and we are fully aware of it, and GTCNI will take account of that. The development of any competence framework is done in conjunction with the sector. The sector will contribute to that and make sure that it is signed and bought up to that.

Alan, is there anything that you want to add?

Mr Boyd: Historically, when I took up post in 2019, there was work ongoing to review competences at that stage under the Department's learning leaders strategy, and GTCNI was actively involved. The CEO attended the steering group taking forward that body of work, and I fully expect that, in due course, a new CEO will again be actively involved in those areas.

Mrs Mason: I take the point about making those very specific, but there is an understanding now that the Irish-medium sector is so vast and is growing at such a rate that it probably warrants something more specific. It is good to know that it is recognised and you were there. Will there be continued engagement with that sector as we move forward? I think that that is really important.

Mr Bailey: Absolutely. In fact, I sit on the management side of the Teachers' Negotiating Committee (TNC). Maria Thomasson is a member of management side, and I meet her regularly. Do not quote me on this, but, from recollection, I think that the Irish-medium sector itself has developed a set of competences that are very specific to it. There is quite a bit of groundwork there that can be leveraged and made use of. Hopefully, that reassures you on that front.

Mr Middleton: One of my questions was about the unions, but you have effectively answered that. Apologies, but I am completely new to this, having been on the Committee for only a couple of weeks. On the consultation piece with teachers, a video went out, and when I read your piece, it said that you hope to engage one final time, and it talked about further feedback. You have just told us that you sent a video previously. What was that video about? Was it on the new stuff, or was it about what the GTCNI does generally?

Mr Bailey: It was an update on the proposed policy intention of the Bill. That was about 18 months ago.

Mr Middleton: Was the other one just sent on Monday?

Mr Bailey: Yes.

Mr Middleton: Can we have sight of that? Can that be shared?

Mr Bailey: Of course.

Mr Middleton: That would be useful. The other thing is that you got 1,200 responses on the previous occasion. Are you expecting similar this time around? You indicated that the Minister intends to bring the Bill to the House after Halloween recess. I assume that those consultations will be broadly in the same vein. If people have not seen it, I suppose that it will be hard to know, but I assume that it is in the same vein and people will be broadly supportive of these types of structures. Will that be brought in alongside the Bill and considered through the relevant stages of that?

Mr Bailey: I have a couple of comments. The video was put out 18 months ago, and we did a formal consultation with a series of questions. All teachers were invited to respond to the questions and provide their input. That showed support for the general proposals. What we have sent out this week is more of an update for teachers. I do not think that I could call it a consultation. If teachers wish to respond, they have the opportunity to come back with comments. We do not anticipate that there will be anything significantly different from what we have had before. It was more about the point that you made earlier, Chair, of getting it on the profile of teachers and letting them know that we are hoping that the Bill will come out soon. We expect that the teachers and their representatives — the trade unions — will clearly get involved in the consultation process that you will all be involved in and leading. A lot of these things will be rehearsed and discussed again through that process.

Mr Middleton: That is fine. I will move on to the fee-setting piece. Talk me through that. It is a £44 annual fee. Can you explain how that will be calculated going forward?

Mr Bailey: There is a £44 fee. It is tax-deductible, so it does not actually cost you £44. That is the good thing about membership fees. It has been the same fee for 20 years. That was introduced in 2005. Once the new body is established and there is a board, it will be up to the board and the new body to determine its fee structure. That is included in the draft Bill. Depending on what services they provide and how they can justify those, they will review the fee, and, as we said in our paper, it will probably go up. I am pretty sure about that, particularly because it has not been looked at for 20 years. The fee of £44 is less than the fee in all the other jurisdictions in the local area that charge a fee. In the meantime, we plan to demonstrate how the new organisation will not just do registration, which is what the current organisation is doing at the minute, but will effectively regulate teachers and promote the profession. We want to be able to demonstrate the benefits that make it worthwhile. Ultimately, to answer your question, it will be up to the new board and the new organisation to determine the fee level.

Mr Middleton: OK. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): If anyone else wants to come in, please indicate now. Jon, you are next.

Mr Burrows: Thanks. That was really useful. On the point about the misconduct investigations and sanctions, will the person who presides over the misconduct adjudication be legally qualified?

Mr Bailey: The detail of exactly who is involved will have to be worked out. The Bill makes provision for a whole series of sanctions, and it makes provision for investigatory panels and fitness-to-practice panels. That is the right phrase, Alan, is it not?

Mr Boyd: Yes.

Mr Bailey: When it comes to the make-up of those panels, the Bill makes provision that it should not include board members. There has to be a level of independence. At this stage, we have not gone into detail — Alan will correct me if I am wrong — on the exact make-up of those panels. We have just set out the nature and type of individuals who should be on them and that they should not be board members, for example. We need to do further work on that.

Mr Burrows: What is the ultimate, most serious sanction available?

Mr Boyd: The most serious sanction will be removal from the teaching register, which leaves the person ineligible to work as a teacher in Northern Ireland in any grant-aided school.

Mr Burrows: The misconduct case law is extremely complex. It applies across all the regulated professions. In my view, to put this on the record, the chair of that panel has to be legally qualified. Otherwise, you will be tied up in appeals, which you will lose because that is just the nature of it. I used to do that work.

Delay is one of the biggest problems in these misconduct investigations and adjudication panels. Will there be any timelines to make sure that there is not unnecessary delay?

Mr Boyd: Again, all I can offer you at this stage is a reassurance that we are trying to pick up on the best elements of the models that are followed by the other UK teaching regulators. We have predominantly been looking towards GTC Scotland and the Education Workforce Council in Wales. There is an appreciation that justice delayed is justice not served. The system that they operate generally appears to be that the processes go to investigation and a three-person panel undertakes the investigation. As soon as the panel is able to report and provide evidence, that then goes to a separate fitness-to-practice panel, which will weigh up the evidence that it has received and make a determination on whether a sanction is appropriate. At this stage, we cannot say what the timescale would be. Some of that will come down to elements of practicality in GTCNI, but we can say with confidence that GTCNI will be looking to recruit a body of panel members and have them pre-cleared and ready to go so that, as and when they need to convene either panel, they will have a body on which to draw straight away.

Mr Burrows: Is the Scottish body — let us call it the adjudication panel, as opposed to the investigation panel — chaired by a legally qualified chair?

Mr Boyd: My understanding is that the requirement in Scotland is only that one of the three panel members comes from a legal background. I do not know that it is necessary that that member is always the chair of the panel.

Mr Burrows: OK. My next question is about recognition of sanctions. Will there be a UK-wide list of teachers and their sanctions or of those who are disbarred from being a teacher? Is there, or will there be, mutual recognition of sanctions across the UK and, indeed, Ireland? It is possible that someone who has received a sanction in England could come here and that you would not be able to see that sanction? How does that get managed?

Mr Bailey: I will make a couple of comments, if I may. There is a four-nations group of all the GTCNI equivalents which meets regularly. It gets together all the time, and there are a lot of connections between all the teacher registration bodies in all the jurisdictions. There are strong relationships there, and there is a lot of cross-party working. This Bill will bring in a series of progressive sanctions. At the minute, GTC can have you either on the register or off the register. There is nothing in between in terms of different sanctions. Part of the process of developing all the detail on those graded sanctions will include engagement with other jurisdictions. I am not sure that we could say that there is a direct read-across, but there will be enough connection so that you cannot move from one jurisdiction where you have been barred to another jurisdiction and gain access. They all talk to one another.

Mr Boyd: There is definitely an exchange of information that goes on already. At present, the most universal approach is that a teacher who had committed, for the sake of argument, a serious incident or behaviour against a child —.

Mr Burrows: Gross misconduct or whatever, yes.

Mr Boyd: They would end up being referred to the UK Disclosure and Barring Service, which can access the full range of police information in addition to its own investigatory materials. If it takes a barring decision, that will be confirmed to all the teaching regulators, which means that that person will be removed by the relevant body. There is also an exchange whereby, normally, a teacher who seeks to move, say, from Northern Ireland to Scotland will request what is known as a "letter of professional standing" to show that they are in good standing as a professional, and they will give that to the new body that they need to register with. That body will always verify the bona fides of that letter of professional standing with GTC Northern Ireland. There have been a very small number, thankfully, of cases in which people have altered elements of letters of professional standing, and those were picked up immediately, so there is a system. While we cannot say with 100% certainty that there will never be an omission, the system works well.

Mr Burrows: I have two questions, which I will wrap into one. One is that suspension remains —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Jon, sorry, if I can just come in, we are running short of time. A final comment, perhaps.

Mr Burrows: OK. I will give you one. A lot of professional disciplinary regimes have an issue with people trying to retire during a disciplinary process. Let us talk about the upper end of the scale: gross misconduct. How will that work? If teachers retire, what will ensure that they will be on a register and will show up so that they cannot reapply for a job elsewhere in the UK?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I ask for a very brief response to that, please.

Mr Bailey: It is probably worth saying that those questions on the detail are really helpful. A lot of the detail will be worked out as the Bill moves forward. They are issues that we have started to think about, but it would be unfair, and not right, to say that we have got them all bottomed out yet. However, I appreciate their being raised.

Mr Burrows: Yes, I thought that it would be useful.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): No doubt there will be detailed scrutiny of a lot of those issues when we have a Bill in front of us. One thing to put on the radar, following on from some of Jon's questions, is that it would be good to see what protections will be built into the Bill, when it is fully formed, to protect teachers from spurious allegations of misconduct. Perhaps a robust complaints process will have been delivered at school level, and then someone takes it to the next stage. We want robust regulation — absolutely — and we want to know that the people who are teaching in our classrooms, to whom we are entrusting the care of our children, are fit to teach, but we do not want teachers to be exposed to reputational damage from spurious claims. That should be factored into the thinking.

There are no other indications from members. The Clerk has just flagged a useful question. What is the time frame? When do you anticipate it being ready? Will it be shortly after the October recess?

Mr Bailey: That is the plan. The Minister has approved the Bill. We await the Attorney General's nod, effectively; we have already got the Departmental Solicitor's Office certificate of competence. If that is done in the next few days, we will want to get it off to the Executive, with a view to them agreeing at their meeting to introduce it to the Assembly in November. That is our plan.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will maybe be seeing you soon.

Mr Bailey: We look forward to the Committee Stage.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you both for your time on that.