The Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 (c 30) was enacted by the United Kingdom Parliament on 16 July 1998. It enabled universities to charge tuition fees, and established statutory General Teaching Councils (GTC's) for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the modification the remit of the General Teaching Council for Scotland. The act also made provision for the new system of student loans that were introduced, and introduces paid leave from work for training towards a qualification. The passing of this act repealed the Education (Student Loans) Act 1998, and the sections relating to student finance in the Education Act 1996. The student loans system was later updated in the Higher Education Act 2004.
The Teaching and Higher Education Act is divided into four parts, which can be summarised as follows:
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
School prayer, in the context of religious liberty, is state-sanctioned or mandatory prayer by students in public schools. Depending on the country and the type of school, state-sponsored prayer may be required, permitted, or prohibited. The United Kingdom also requires daily worship by law, but does not enforce it. Countries which prohibit or limit school prayer often differ in their reasons for doing so. In the United States, school prayer cannot be required of students in accordance with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is generally rigorously applied in public schools; the Establishment Clause does not prevent prayer in private schools that have no public funding. In Canada, school-sponsored prayer is disallowed under the concept of freedom of conscience as outlined in the Canadian Charter on Rights & Fundamental Freedoms. School-sponsored prayer is disallowed in France as a byproduct of its status as a secular nation.
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a non-ministerial department of His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament. Ofsted's role is to make sure that organisations providing education, training and childcare services in England do so to a high standard for children and students. Ofsted is responsible for inspecting a range of educational institutions, including state schools and some independent schools. It also inspects childcare, adoption and fostering agencies and initial teacher training, and regulates early years childcare facilities and children's social care services.
Education in England is overseen by the Department for Education. Local government authorities are responsible for implementing policy for public education and state-funded schools at a local level. State-funded schools may be selective grammar schools or non-selective comprehensive schools. All state schools are subject to assessment and inspection by the government department Ofsted. England also has private schools and home education; legally, parents may choose to educate their children by any suitable means.
Education in Scotland is provided in state schools, private schools and by individuals through homeschooling. Mandatory education in Scotland begins for children in Primary 1 (P1) at primary school and ends in Fourth Year (S4) at secondary school. Overall accountability and control of state–education in Scotland rests with the Scottish Government, and is overseen by its executive agency, Education Scotland, with additional responsibility for nursery schools being the joint responsibility of both Education Scotland and the Care Inspectorate. Scotland's private schools are overseen by the Scottish Council of Independent Schools. Children in Scotland sit mandatory National Standardised Assessments in Primary 1 (P1), Primary 4 (P4), Primary 7 (P7) at the end of primary school, and Third Year (S3) in secondary school, which assist in monitoring children's progress and providing diagnostic data information to support teachers' professional judgement.
A comprehensive school is a secondary school for pupils aged 11–16 or 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is restricted on the basis of selection criteria, usually academic performance. The term is commonly used in relation to England and Wales, where comprehensive schools were introduced as state schools on an experimental basis in the 1940s and became more widespread from 1965. They may be part of a local education authority or be a self governing academy or part of a multi-academy trust.
The Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE/PGCertEd) is a one- or two-year higher education course in England, Wales and Northern Ireland which provides training in order to allow graduates to become teachers within maintained schools. In England, there are two routes available to gaining a PGCE – either on a traditional university-led teacher training course or school-led teacher training.
The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales. It established local education authorities with defined powers, authorized public money to improve existing schools, and tried to frame conditions attached to this aid so as to earn the goodwill of managers. It has long been seen as a milestone in educational development, but recent commentators have stressed that it brought neither free nor compulsory education, and its importance has thus tended to be diminished rather than increased.
The Education Reform Act 1988 is widely regarded as the most important single piece of education legislation in England and Wales since the 'Butler' Education Act 1944.
The General Teaching Council for Scotland is a fee based registered charity and the world's first independent registration and regulation body for teaching. The current Chief Executive and Registrar is Pauline Stephen. The GTC Scotland maintains a register of qualified teachers and college lecturers; there were 80,695 teachers and college lecturers on the register on 31 March 2022.
The Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) was a programme in England and Wales for graduates who want to gain Qualified Teacher Status while working. A person must work in a school as an unqualified teacher in order to participate in the programme, which can last from three months to a year. The Department for Education announced in mid-2012 that The Graduate Teacher Programme will no longer exist, and has now been replaced with a new scheme called School Direct. The last academic year the programme ran was 2012/2013.
The General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) was the professional body for teaching in England between 2000 and 2012. The GTC was established by the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 which set two aims: "to contribute to improving standards of teaching and the quality of learning, and to maintain and improve standards of professional conduct among teachers, in the interests of the public". The GTC was abolished in 2012 with some of its functions being assumed by the Teaching Agency, an executive agency of the Department for Education, which in 2013 became the National College for Teaching and Leadership.
The Education Act 2005 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was enacted in order to simplify the process of school improvement, strengthening the accountability framework for schools, in particular by amending the approach used by Ofsted when inspecting schools in England. This Act repealed the provisions of the School Inspections Act 1996.
A certified teacher is an educator who has earned credentials from an authoritative source, such as the government, a higher education institution or a private body or source. This teacher qualification gives a teacher authorization to teach and grade in pre-schools, primary or secondary education in countries, schools, content areas or curricula where authorization is required. While many authorizing entities require student teaching experience before earning teacher certification, routes vary from country to country.
The General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced Level, or A Level, is a main school leaving qualification in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It is available as an alternative qualification in other countries.
The Education Act 2011 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was the first major piece of education legislation to be introduced by the coalition government, and makes changes to many areas of educational policy, including the power of school staff to discipline students, the manner in which newly trained teachers are supervised, the regulation of qualifications, the administration of local authority maintained schools, academies, the provision of post-16 education, including vocational apprenticeships, and student finance for higher education.
Tuition fees in the United Kingdom were reintroduced for full-time resident students in 1998, as a means of funding tuition to undergraduate and postgraduate certificate students at universities. Since their introduction, the fees have been reformed multiple times by several bills, with the cap on fees notably rising to £9,000 a year for the 2012-13 academic year.
The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 was enacted into law in the United Kingdom by the Houses of Parliament on 27 April 2017. It is intended to create a new regulatory framework for higher education, increase competition and student choice, ensure students receive value for money, and strengthen the research sector.
Section 70 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 stipulates that pupils of community, foundation or voluntary schools in England and Wales must take part in a daily act of Collective Worship, unless they have been explicitly withdrawn by their parents. The same requirement is applied to academy schools via their funding agreements, so it is true to say that all maintained schools in England and Wales are subject to the same rules. However, in practice there is widespread non-compliance with the legislation, which has not been monitored by Ofsted since 2004.
A school federation is a group of schools in England and Wales which, as defined in the Education Act 2002, operate under a statutory shared governing body, or whose governing bodies form a shared committee with collaborative terms of governance. Soft federations with a statutory committee can be called soft governance federations. Schools in a federation are known as federated schools.
