GTC Equality and Diversity Scheme

The GTC’s Equality and Diversity Scheme has been published to coincide with the new Gender Equality Duty which came into force in April 2007. It shows how the GTC will ensure equality of opportunity as an employer and in its work with teachers and others.

The Scheme was approved by Council members at their March Council meeting (28 March 2007), and has been introduced to recognise additional responsibilities relating to:

• gender equality, arising from the Equality Act 2006
• disability equality, arising from the Disability Discrimination Act 2005.

It sets out how the GTC will fulfil its duties under the race, disability and gender equality duties through the services it provides, and how as an employer the GTC will ensure that it is acting according to equality requirements relating to race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, age and religion or belief. The GTC will approach equalities issues positively and proactively, rather than simply in the spirit of meeting the legislative requirements.

The Scheme received an overwhelmingly positive feedback in response to a widespread consultation carried out by the GTC among national education organisations, Council members and teachers.

The GTC has already begun to implement actions across six areas:

• registration
• regulation
• its statutory duty to advise government
• finance and administration
• communications
• employment.

These actions include further improvements to ethnicity and disability data held on the GTC register of qualified teachers, advising government and others on better support for schools to meet their own responsibilities under the equality duties and improving accessibility to the GTC website.

Click on the images to download the executive summary (PDF, 96kb) or the full report (PDF, 344kb).