The number of teachers being referred to the disciplinary watchdog for alleged misconduct rose by more than 10 per cent last year.

According to the Teaching Regulation Agency’s annual report, published today, the agency received 985 teacher misconduct referrals in 2018-19.

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This compares with 891 teacher misconduct referrals in 2017-18 - and represents an increase of 10.5 per cent.

No increase in teacher bans

In 2018-19, the TRA held 143 professional conduct panels.

Of these, 91 (64 per cent) resulted in teachers being banned from the profession, eight (6 per cent) found no finding of fact, seven (5 per cent) found facts but no unprofessional conduct and 37 (26 per cent) found unprofessional conduct but did not result in a prohibition.

The figures represent a slight fall in the proportion of teachers being banned after appearing in front of a professional conduct panel. In 2017-18, there were 137 professional conduct panels with 91 (66 per cent) resulting in teachers being struck off.

The average time to conclude teacher misconduct cases referred to a professional conduct panel was 47.14 weeks. This was slightly longer than in 2017-18, when the figure was 45.2 weeks, but within the TRA’s target of 52 weeks.