It’s a debate nearly as old as teaching itself. Should the profession attempt to emulate the General Medical Council and create a self-governing regulatory authority? Advocates argue it would provide a sense of belonging that comes with being a mature profession, along with a higher status, a better standard of living and an effective model of self-policing. If they are right, should the government attempt to facilitate such an organisation?

For me, having carried out an extensive survey of the history of this debate, the answer is a resounding “no”. The idea is dubious, impractical and the profession is not suited to making it work.

Since Victorian times, policies designed for self-regulation of the teaching profession in England have been, to all intents and purposes, futile. If only New Labour had learnt these lessons from the past when it founded the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) in 2000, much time and money would have been saved. 

And anyone proposing to found another autonomous body in the future is doomed to failure: they are always contested as inappropriate and unnecessary.

History shows us that whenever policymakers attempt to mould English teachers into a profession with its own representative council and register, they fail. Each initiative has been characterised by a period of policy implementation followed by a long phase of inertia, controversy and, finally, abolition. 

Graveyard of failed bodies

Since the 1840s, the depressing graveyard of failed bodies seeking self-governance includes the headstones of two teachers’ councils set up in the first half of the 19th century - the Royal Society of Teachers and the Royal College of Preceptors (“preceptor” being a Victorian word for teacher) - as well as more recent incarnations, such as the GTCE and the Chartered College of Teaching. All were born from the idea that teachers could attain for themselves a professional utopia, and one in which a teaching council could flourish. All were destined to fail.

So, let’s step back 172 years to when the Royal College of Preceptors (RCP) - which at one point had among its staff the celebrated author HG Wells - attempted to promote policies designed to create a teaching council and register. It is often said that one can predict the future by learning from the past, and this is certainly true in this case. This learned society encountered many of the obstacles that later went on to plague registration councils in more recent times - including the GTCE - and other professional membership organisations, of which the Chartered College of Teaching is surely one today. 

On 20 June 1846, the day on which the preceptors assembled at an inaugural meeting in Bloomsbury, London, the founding members announced that they would seek to promote the interests of private school teachers and teaching (there was no recognisable state sector) by creating a teachers’ council sanctioned by Parliament.

Yet the college failed to reverberate its intent through to the educational community at large. Following its establishment, the RCP was granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria in 1849. So far, so good. 

But it will come as little surprise to readers - and, for that matter, anyone who has ever spent any time in the sphere of education policy - that what eventually set the preceptors back, more than anything else, was their campaign for the government to establish a register. Convinced that there was no mileage in getting the preceptors themselves to regulate the profession, the RCP later realised that any credible form of self-governance was doomed to fail and it gradually faded into obscurity. 

By comparison, the launch of the GTCE, in September 2000, appeared similarly muted and was remarkable for its lack of impact. Just 12 years after its inception, it met its demise.

The parallels between the RCP and the modern GTCE do not end there. Early on, both bodies were keen to draw on financial aid from the government. 

Back in the 19th century, a lobby on behalf of the RCP, led by William Ewart MP, visited 10 Downing Street for the purpose of gaining extra funding, only to be declined by Lord Russell, then prime minister, who told Ewart to keep their meeting secret and to leave by the back door. 

Soon after, the RCP ran into financial difficulties and, in 1849, experienced outstanding debts of £604.

Similarly, in April 2001, just a year after its foundation, the GTCE was forced to ask the government for a large grant to keep its head above water. A decade later, after David Cameron took office as prime minister he made the decision that the GTCE imposed far too much on the public purse and did not provide cost effectiveness or added value.

Money issues notwithstanding, it was inevitable that both organisations were doomed to fail owing to the fractious and, at times, contradictory nature of their relationship with government, with rank-and-file members of the RCP fearing that if they had financial aid and government support, it would lead to interference in the profession. 

To anyone familiar with the GTCE and, more recently, the Chartered College of Teaching, this might sound a tad ironic. 

In 1846, RCP member Edward Lane, a private academy teacher from Plymouth, spoke of how he “dreaded” the prospect of government arbitration. While the efficient practitioner seemingly had nothing to fear, the inefficient teacher, where there was a state arbiter demanding accountability, risked losing their livelihood. 

The college eventually came crashing down after failing to secure vital parliamentary support in the 1880s and 1890s. The overriding reason for the demise of the RCP was the actions of teachers’ unions to thwart progress. Again, we see this replicated in the case of the GTCE where, for example, at one stage, the National Union of Teachers recommended that its members did not pay the council’s membership fee. 

The embedded self-interest of the unions and idea of registration will always come into conflict, as is happening right now with the Chartered College of Teaching.

In the early 20th century, the leading civil servant and permanent secretary to the Board of Education, Sir Robert Morant, who was charged with pushing through two teachers’ councils in the early 1900s - both of which were abolished soon afterwards - was eventually forced to admit that “the Teachers’ Register is simply an intellectual problem which is, within the limits of my knowledge and capacity, insoluble”. 

Similarly, while there were initial high hopes for the GTCE at the start of the new millennium, dissatisfaction with it soon set in and, as a result of Cameron’s intervention, the quango was dissolved in 2012. 

As was the case a century earlier, teachers never wholly wanted a professional council and paid-up members of the GTCE felt it did nothing for them. 

Nor can much faith be pinned on the Chartered College of Teaching, founded in January 2017. As honourable as its premise might seem, the college was brought in as the professional body of teachers and has very much the same negative appeal as previous registration endeavours. 

It is true that the college has gone out of its way to promote the ranks and involvement of the classroom teacher: there’s little doubt that it is member-driven. But is such weighting over-emphasised? And might that, in itself, prove to be a problem? To rely so much on teachers to deliver the goods does them no favours as they are already over-worked and over-burdened. 

Does leaving out in the cold an important array of education theorists and consultants mean we are turning our back on a potentially vital source of help and expertise? There has already been much bickering in this area. 

A long way to go

And, for some critics, there are even greater concerns. Funding, something that frustrated the college’s predecessors, should not be overlooked. Those membership figures that have been publicised show that the college has a long way to go before it can be heralded as a beacon of professional prowess and prestige. The current membership is heavily laden with those who pay nothing to join. 

Accusations that the college is financially too dependent on grants from Treasury coffers are difficult to refute. 

Payment of the college’s bill by the state means that the government is still the chief paymaster. The days when the college can become wholly self-sufficient seem very distant, if not completely unattainable. 
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that ­self-regulation of the profession is close to impossible. I would argue that it’s not just the practicalities that will undermine any further attempts but a fundamental philosophical problem: the mistaken idea that a council and a corresponding register is the be-all and end-all of the profession. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Former regulatory bodies have repeatedly shown that to resort to advocating such misplaced aims is a quixotic chimera far removed from the reality and the practicalities of the teacher’s professional life. 

It is far better to allow civil servants to continue to watch out for teachers’ indiscretions through the Teacher Regulation Agency. Current arrangements should not give way to the latest tilt at attempting professional autonomy or self-regulation. 

The pursuit for these would, as history tells us, continue only to disappoint and frustrate - and lead to yet more defunct quangos. 

Dr Richard Willis is a historian based at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. He is the author of five published books, including The Struggle for the General Teaching Council, The Development of Primary, Secondary and Teacher Education in England and The History of the College of Preceptors in Victorian England