The School Staffing (England) (Amendment) (No.2) Regulations 2006

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations amend the School Staffing (England) Regulations 2003 (“the School Staffing Regulations”), which apply to schools in England maintained by local authorities. The regulation numbers below are those of the School Staffing Regulations as amended by these Regulations.

The School Staffing Regulations, as amended by the School Staffing (England)(Amendment) Regulations 2006 (S.I.2006/1067), require teachers and support staff in maintained schools to meet specified requirements as to qualifications, health, physical capacity and the absence of any bar from working with children and young persons. They also require that, subject to exceptions, a person appointed to be a teacher or member of the support staff must, prior to or as soon as practicable after, his appointment be subject to an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (“CRB”) check made under the Police Act 1997.

These Regulations add further requirements: a person’s identity and right to work in the United Kingdom must be checked (regulations 11(2) and 20(2)). They remove, in effect, an exception from the enhanced CRB check requirement for foreign nationals for whom carrying out such a check was inappropriate, and persons who have lived outside the United Kingdom must be subject to further checks if a CRB check is insufficient to establish suitability to work in a school (regulations 11(4) and 20(4)).

Schools are required to keep a register of the checks which they have made in respect of their own staff (regulations 11(7)-(10) and 20(7)-(10)) and, in the case of supply staff, of the information about checks provided by the supply agency (regulations 11(11) and (12) and 20(11) and (12)). Local education authorities are required to carry out the same checks on supply and school meals staff whom they appoint as they carry out on other staff (regulation 11A).

A teacher or member of support staff supplied by an agency cannot work at a school until the agency have confirmed that checks have been carried out, and schools are required in their arrangements with agencies to place them under an obligation to provide this information (regulations 15A and 24A). If a person moves from a post which did not bring him regularly into contact with children or young persons to one which does at the same school, he must be subject to an enhanced CRB check (regulations 18A and 26A).

A full regulatory impact assessment of the effect that this instrument will have on the costs of business is available from Colin Green, DfES, Caxton House, Tothill Street, London SW1H 9NA and on the Department for Education and Skills website at www.dfes.gov.uk.