Data protection

Under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998 the General Teaching Council is a data controller and the organisation is fully committed to following the principles of the Act.

Access to the Register

Teachers are entitled to a complete printout of all the information that is held about them on the Register. That information includes:

• teacher reference (aka DfES) number
• date of birth
• a contact address
• details of the teacher's employment
• details of the teacher's qualifications
• the terms of any restriction in force against a teacher.

This data is supplied to teachers under statutory legislation and a formal Subject Access Request, as detailed in Part II, Section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998, is not required.

Employers will have limited access to information about a teacher. Employers need to know if a teacher is qualified, where they qualified, the subjects they studied and whether a teacher has passed induction. They also need to know about any restrictions in force against a teacher.

The only information the public can be given is whether or not a teacher is registered.

Disclosure of data to third parties

The GTC may share teachers' personal information with a 3rd party without the teachers' consent providing the conditions in Schedule 2 of the Data Protection Act 1998 are fulfilled. The relevant condition is that: 'The processing is necessary for the exercise of any functions of the Crown, a Minister of the Crown or a government department.'

Anonymised data falls outside the scope of the Data Protection Act 1998. The GTC is therefore prepared to consider the provision of anonymised data to support external research provided that the:

• research falls within the broad parameters of GTC's policy interests
• request is manageable within the GTC's resources
• help of the GTC is acknowledged in all relevant publications and
• data that has been supplied in an anonymous format must remain that way for the duration of processing.