Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Written evidence submitted by Edapt (CWSB181)

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Introduction

1. Edapt is the UK’s leading provider of employment dispute support services for teachers and staff in schools. Our qualified and experienced staff offer assistance to teachers in thousands of schools across the country. We help our members navigate disciplinary and grievance proceedings, ensuring fairer outcomes that benefit staff retention, school performance and pupils’ learning and development.

2. Edapt is grateful for the opportunity to submit evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill committee. We have focused our response on one single area where we believe teachers’ conditions can be quickly and meaningfully improved, based on our frontline experience.

Summary

3. Edapt broadly welcomes the introduction of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill and its topline intentions to update safeguarding protections to reflect modern practice and address challenges felt in the schools sector. We especially welcome the intention behind measures to create a set of minimum standards on teachers’ pay and conditions.

4. To that end, we believe there is an opportunity for the Bill to go further, and address a fundamental deficit in teachers’ equal access to rights at work. Specifically, the Bill should be amended to extend the right for teachers to be accompanied during disciplinary and grievance hearings. This right should include provision for "certified companions" - not just colleagues or trade union representatives - to provide accompaniment.

5. Accompaniment of this kind is of paramount importance in the profession. It gives teachers the peace of mind that any unsubstantiated allegations will not be contested without adequate support. Regrettably, our research shows that 28% of teachers are subject to an allegation from a student or parent at some point in their career (equivalent to 148,000 teachers in England). [1] While one in four schools suspended a member of staff in the academic year 2023/24, with signs that this situation is only getting worse given there was a 60 per cent increase in referrals of cases to the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) in the last year.

6. Good schools and trusts already permit accompaniment of the kind recommended as a matter of best practice. Thus, by extending the statutory right for teachers to be accompanied, the Bill would further harmonise standards across the sector, and ensure that teachers who have chosen not to be members of a trade union enjoy equal rights. This is consequential given the latest figures show that 54.3% of those working in the education sector are not trade union members. [2] Importantly however, such an approach would fully protect trade unions’ ability to accompany their members to hearings.

Extension of teachers’ right to accompaniment

7. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill contains a raft of measures designed to standardise school structures and abolish unfair disparities in teachers’ pay and conditions. A key driver behind the government’s decision to legislate is a desire to create a "core offer" on pay and conditions across all state schools, and "a school system more rooted in collaboration and partnership". [3]

8. It is therefore important that the new framework of conditions created by the Bill is fair and effective, and that it cements an ethos of mutual respect between teachers and school management.

9. For teachers, one of the most important components of the current employment rights landscape is the right for workers to be accompanied at a disciplinary or grievance hearing by a companion. [4] Edapt has an acute understanding and firsthand experience of the positive role that accompaniment by an appropriately trained professional can play in boosting the quality, efficiency and outcomes of disciplinary and grievance hearings.

10. Professional companions are trained to offer informed and balanced advice, and to help employees understand and effectively respond to the case against them. They ensure that procedural rules are followed, reducing the likelihood of unfair treatment. They often help parties reach a fair resolution faster, avoiding the need for drawn-out legal processes. As a result, trained companions can and do reduce anxiety and stress, mitigating the mental health challenges that formal processes can cause.

11. Accompaniment of this kind gives teachers the peace of mind that any unsubstantiated allegations will not be contested without adequate support. Regrettably this is increasingly necessary: our research shows that 28% of teachers are subject to an allegation from a student or parent at some point in their career (equivalent to 148,000 teachers in England). [5] During the last academic year alone, 1 in 7 teachers in state secondary schools were subject to an allegation. It is unsurprising that 75% of teachers say that the most important reason for joining a teaching union or an alternative like Edapt is for legal and employment support and protection against allegations.

12. While the law goes some way to recognising the role of trained and certified companions, the current framework (certainly insofar as it relates to education) is in need of an urgent update. Currently only a fully certified trade union representative or a colleague has the statutory right to accompany a teacher to a hearing - leaving many to navigate proceedings alone.

13. The effect is that the sizable minority who have chosen not to be members of a trade union are, in practice, denied accompaniment by a certified companion. This goes against a basic principle that all teachers should have equal employment rights, especially throughout the state sector.

14. An expanded statutory right to accompaniment is an entitlement that teachers want and objective evidence supports. In June 2024, 97% of teachers in an independent survey by Teacher Tapp of almost 8,000 teachers agreed with the statement that " All teachers and school staff (even those who do not belong to a trade union) should be entitled to bring an appropriately trained companion/representative to a formal disciplinary hearing ".

15. The Bill presents an easy opportunity to remedy this, through a targeted and proportionate amendment to teachers’ conditions set by the Secretary of State. This would supplement teachers’ existing statutory rights to accompaniment (under section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999), but need not entail any wider changes to the UK’s employment rights framework. Additionally, the hard-fought and hard-won rights of trade union representatives to support their members would remain protected.

A new approach of certified accompaniment for teachers

16. Given that the positive value of experienced companions is already recognised in law, and in practice at the discretion of many schools, Edapt believes a simple amendment to the Bill to extend the type and availability of these companions for teachers would not only resolve an equality deficit, but create compound benefits for both teachers, schools and ultimately students.

17. Our suggested approach is for a new clause to be inserted under the cross-heading Teachers’ pay and conditions, and our proposed amendment is attached as an appendix. This new clause would amend section 123 of the 2002 Education Act (order under section 122: scope). It would create a new paragraph in subsection (1) which enables the Secretary of State to make provision for teachers to be accompanied by a companion who has been certified by a professional body as having relevant experience or training. New subsections "(5)", "(6)", "(7)" and "(8)" would define a professional body as an organisation authorised by the Secretary of State, define relevant experience and training, and give the Secretary of State powers to make appropriate regulations for these purposes.

18. This approach is based on four key principles: increasing fairness; improving the quality of disciplinary and grievance hearings in schools; taking pressure off the Teaching Regulation Agency and employment tribunals; and ensuring coherence with the Bill’s intentions. These are elaborated below.

19. Increasing fairness: Certified and professional companions offer competent, informed support and create fairer outcomes across the board. Amending the right to accompaniment would mean no teachers need be left unsupported in complex hearings or, worse, accompanied by inappropriate companions who may frustrate the process or even cause inadvertent detriment to their case.

20. Better quality hearings: Certified companions are trained to navigate the complexities of employment law and disciplinary procedures, and their presence leads to demonstrably more efficient and effective hearings. As a result they can reduce teachers’ anxiety and stress, mitigating some of the serious mental health challenges that formal processes can cause. Edapt has received first-hand testimony from our members, who have told us of the considerable - and in some cases life-saving -benefits that our accompaniment has provided. This is particularly true for headteachers who are even more likely to be subject to allegations.

21. Taking pressure off the Teaching Regulation Agency: The presence of certified companions can reduce unnecessary disputes and escalation, i.e. referrals to the Teaching Regulation Agency and/or the employment tribunal. As it stands the Bill will significantly broaden the scope of the Teaching Regulation Agency to investigate and prohibit teachers engaged in a wider range of settings. This can only add to the large caseloads of work referred to the TRA, and existing delays to hearings. By reducing the demand for referrals, expanded accompaniment can free up the TRA to focus on the cases that require its attention.

22. Ensuring coherence with the Bill’s objectives: Extending teachers’ right to accompaniment coheres with the Bill’s wider intentions to create a common set of standards across all state schools, as well as engendering a system more rooted in collaboration and partnership. Granting all teachers sensible accompaniment can help to drive up standards across the sector, aid mutual respect between teaching staff and management, tackle long-standing problems around retention, and make the teaching profession more attractive.

23. Our suggested approach specifically does not endorse or entail the introduction of a right to legal representation during disciplinary hearings. Indeed, in our view this would be wholly disproportionate. As such, for the purposes of the proposed amendment, neither relevant experience nor relevant training should be taken to refer to legal experience or legal training, and the Secretary of State would have the power to reflect this in the professional bodies authorised.

24. It is for these reasons that we would strongly recommend that the committee amend the Bill as set out, to extend provisions on right to accompaniment for teachers. While the changes proposed amount to a minor additional component to the Secretary of State’s powers, they would have a lasting, positive impact on the teaching profession.

For further information, please contact Alistair Wood at alistair@edapt.org.uk

Appendix: Proposed New Clause

"Teacher’s pay and conditions: right to be accompanied

(1) Section 123 of the Education Act 2002 (scope of section 122 orders) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (1), after paragraph (j) insert -

"(k) make provision for a teacher’s right to be accompanied at a disciplinary or grievance hearing by a person who has been certified in writing by a Professional Body as having relevant experience, or as having received relevant training."

(3) After subsection (4) insert -

"(5) In this section, "Professional Body" means any organisation, which is authorised by a regulation made by the Secretary of State pursuant to subsection 8.

(6) In this section, "relevant experience" means experience of acting as a worker’s companion at disciplinary or grievance hearings.

(7) In this section, "relevant training" means training to act as a worker’s companion at disciplinary or grievance hearings.

(8) The Secretary of State may make a regulation or regulations authorising any organisation as a Professional Body for the purposes of this section." "

January 2025