• Fitness to Teach
• Adjudicating Panels
• Appeals
• Employer's responsibilities
• Fitness to Teach (complaints) panel hearings schedule and decisions
• Fitness to Teach FAQ's
• Hearing types
• Investigation process
• Making a complaint
• Rules and policies

Making a complaint about a teacher

When we receive a complaint against a registered teacher or an applicant for registration, consideration is first given to whether the complaint is relevant to determining a person's fitness to teach.

If we determine that the complaint may be relevant to their fitness to teach, appropriate investigations will be carried out. We may ask the complainant to provide evidence to support the complaint, contact any employer concerned to seek additional information or ask law enforcement agencies (e.g. the police) to provide us with information. All information received will be shared with the teacher or applicant concerned and he/she will be given an opportunity to provide a response to it.

Our Investigating Panel (IP) will consider all of the information provided in relation to the complaint and decide whether the matter should be referred to a hearing before a Fitness to Teach (FtT) Panel.

What we can't do

Our FtT process centres solely on the question of whether the person concerned is fit to teach in terms of their suitability to be a member of the profession. We can't:

• intervene or overturn any decision made by a school or local authority
• investigate complaints against a school or local authority in terms of how they have dealt with a particular situation
• facilitate mediation between any teachers and members of the public
• ask that a teacher apologise for any action
• investigate any allegation from a member of the public that relates to the competence of a teacher
• intervene in matters between an employer and a teacher

To raise a complaint

You can raise a complaint on our Feedback and Complaints section by completing the relevant form.

Please read the information provided on the form and in the leaflet carefully and then submit the completed form to the Fitness to Teach department.

Details of any complaint will be shared, in full with the teacher against whom the complaint is made.