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This report sets out the expenditure and performance of the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) over the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

This report was laid before Parliament on 13 July 2023.

Teaching Regulation Agency Annual Report and Accounts For the year ended 31 March 2023 An executive agency of the Department for Education Teaching Regulation Agency Annual Report and Accounts For the year ended 31 March 2023 An executive agency of the Department for Education Presented to the House of Commons pursuant to Section 6(4) of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 13 July 2023 HC 1485 3© Crown copyright 2023 This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. This publication is available at: www.gov.uk/official-documents Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at Department for Education, Piccadilly Gate, Store Street, Manchester, M1 2WD ISBN 978-1-5286-4236-1 E02930852 07/23 Printed on paper containing 40% recycled fibre content minimum Printed in the UK by HH Associates Ltd. on behalf of the Controller of His Majesty’s Stationery Office 4 Contents Performance Report 7 Performance Overview 8 Performance Analysis 15 Accountability Report 33 Corporate governance report 34 Remuneration and staff report 44 Parliamentary accountability and audit report 59 Financial Statements 67 Statement of Comprehensive Net Expenditure 68 Statement of Financial Position 69 Statement of Cash Flows 70 Statement of Changes in Taxpayers’ Equity 71 Notes to the accounts 72 Annexes 79 5Performance Report 7 Performance Overview Overview This annual report and accounts (ARA) covers the operation of the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA or the Agency), as an executive agency of the Department for Education (DfE or the Department), for the year ending 31 March 2023. Statement of purpose and activities Our purpose is to support employers, schools and headteachers with safeguarding responsibilities, as set out in our 2021-24 Corporate Plan. 1 Teaching in England is a regulated profession, and legislation sets out the training which a teacher has to undertake in order to teach in certain settings. We are responsible for awarding qualified teacher status (QTS) and early years teacher status (EYTS) to individuals who have completed their training in England. We are also responsible for the professional recognition of teachers who have qualified outside of England. We maintain the central record of qualified teachers which provides employers the opportunity to complete pre-employment checks to ensure that they are employing teachers who are not prohibited from teaching and who are appropriately qualified for their role. The Agency, on behalf of the Secretary of State, also takes action on receipt of allegations of serious teacher misconduct, as defined by The Teachers’ Disciplinary (England) Regulations 2012 2 and as amended by The Teachers’ Disciplinary (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2014. 3 Teachers are one of the most significant factors in a child’s education and the overwhelming majority never engage in any form of serious misconduct. For the small minority which do, TRA is responsible for: • investigating serious misconduct, where a teacher’s alleged behaviour is fundamentally incompatible with being a teacher, and could lead to them being prohibited from teaching • pr ohibiting teachers from teaching who have been found to have committed serious misconduct Headteachers and governing bodies are responsible for managing teachers in relation to: • their competence and conduct, and taking action to address underperformance • less serious misconduct in their schools and relevant settings 8 | T eaching Regulation Agency Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23 1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-regulation-agency-corporate-plan 2 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/560/contents/made 3 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1685/contents/madeVision, mission and core principles DfE’s vision states “At our heart, we are the department for realising potential. We enable children and learners to thrive, by protecting the vulnerable and ensuring the delivery of excellent standards of education, training and care. This helps realise everyone’s potential – and that powers our economy, strengthens society, and increases fairness.” We support this by striving to achieve excellence in all that we do by providing a fair and consistent regulatory system for the teaching profession on behalf of the Secretary of State. We do this by: • r egulating the teaching profession through fair and rigorous teacher misconduct investigations and administering professional conduct panel hearings and meetings to enable schools to meet their safeguarding responsibilities 4 • awar ding QTS to teachers who successfully complete initial teacher training (ITT), and EYTS to individuals who complete early years ITT • assessing applications r eceived from teachers trained outside of England for recognition of professional status fairly and efficiently These activities maintain the high-quality standards of the profession, allowing every child access to high-quality education, which are our overarching goals and objectives. Accounting Officer’s review I was delighted to be appointed as the new Chief Executive of TRA from 1 June 2023. As my appointment came after the end of this reporting period, I have taken assurance from the previous Chief Executive (Alan Meyrick) that there has been a sound system of internal controls for this report. I would like to thank Alan for his leadership of the Agency since its creation and his work in the field of teaching regulation prior to that. A key area of focus for the Agency during 2022- 23 has been to increase our capacity to conclude teacher misconduct cases. Between 2019 and 2022, the live caseload we are managing has increased at an average rate of 27% per year. This is due to a number of factors including the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on TRA’s operations, an increase in case complexity and constraints on panellist capacity. The Agency’s Teacher Misconduct Unit (TMU) has taken extensive steps to address this challenge, including successfully implementing a new approach to holding hearings based on a ‘virtual by default’ model with the flexibility to allow for hearings to be held in-person, in line with Regulatory and Procedural requirements. Between February and July 2022, we identified that approximately 80% of hearings were held virtually and were on average 23% less expensive than in-person hearings. These savings and efficiencies were re-invested to increase hearing capacity by 28%. The TMU has also reviewed its organisational structure by creating a dedicated Hearings Delivery and Stakeholder Team, which has increased resilience and improved the process for administering hearings. As a result of these changes, the number of hearings has increased by 39% from 149 in 2021-22 to 207 in 2022-23. 9 Teaching Regulation Agency Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23 | 4 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/886210/Teacher_ misconduct_Disciplinary_Procedures_for_the_teaching_profession.pdfOther interventions undertaken this year will continue to increase our capacity to conclude cases in 2023-24, including a digital discovery exercise which reviewed TMU’s end-to-end internal processes and has made recommendations to maximise potential efficiencies and streamline processes. In addition, there has been a recruitment exercise to increase the number of publicly appointed panellists, which will enable TRA to hold additional hearings from August 2023. ln March 2023, TRA launched a new GOV.UK online service for employers and members of the public to refer serious misconduct by a teacher in England. This service was introduced to provide a more user-friendly digital experience, improve efficiency and to reduce manual processes to minimise the risk of human error. TMU has continued to strengthen its engagement with stakeholders, including developing a Memorandum of Understanding with Ofsted following recommendations in the IICSA: report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. 5 This will support both organisations to share relevant information when there are safeguarding concerns and will be in place in 2023-24. TRA has also been working with the College of Policing to increase awareness of TRA’s role within individual police forces. The Agency’s Teacher Qualification Unit (TQU) has modernised its services through the deployment of new technology. The introduction of the ‘Find a lost Teacher Reference Number’ service in May 2022 automated 60,235 enquiries, many of which would have previously required an agent to respond. TQU continued to benefit from the introduction of email and telephony handling solutions deployed in February and March 2022. These solutions further removed administrative time previously required to respond to enquiries. The new ‘Apply for QTS’ service was launched in November 2022 enabling teachers who hold a teaching qualification from an EEA country, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Gibraltar and the USA to apply to the Agency to have their professional qualifications recognised in England. This service was further developed in February 2023 to additionally enable qualified teachers from Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Ukraine and Zimbabwe to apply for QTS in England. TQU has also collaborated with the DfE to rationalise and improve data collection processes. During 2022-23, this has included consolidating the collection of initial teache