Management Information Sheet

Prohibition order checks are required by statute to be undertaken on individuals who carry out unsupervised/undirected teaching work, eg teachers. The purpose of the regulatory requirement to check prohibition is to prevent a person from working in a role that would contravene any Prohibition Order in place, ie a role that would require them to carry out unsupervised/directed teaching work. This has been in place for some time and schools and academies should be undertaking these checks as part of their pre-employment routine for new appointments.

We have received advice from the DfE which says schools and academies can also choose to undertake prohibition checks on staff who may carry out teaching work.

The Teachers' Disciplinary (England) Regulations 2012 define each of the following activities as 'teaching work':

• planning and preparing lessons and courses for pupils
• delivering lessons to pupils
• assessing the development, progress and attainment of pupils, and
• reporting on the development, progress and attainment of pupils

The regulations provide that these activities do not constitute 'teaching work' if they are carried out under the direction or supervision of a qualified teacher or other person nominated by the headteacher.

There is no statutory requirement for a prohibition check to be made on applications for any school staff position, unless that person will carry out unsupervised/ undirected teaching work. This means that, generally when appointing into teaching assistant positions, prohibition checks will not be required. However, schools and academies can choose to undertake additional checks to those required by legislation to ensure an individual's suitability, for example for HLTA, cover supervisors or where someone applying for a TA role indicates that they have QTS or have previously worked as a teacher.

Our advice to schools and academies is to undertake this check on all new appointments where they may be involved in teaching work as defined above. If a school/academy decides to undertake prohibition order checks on staff, they will need to make it clear through the recruitment process that this is the case.

All prohibition checks should be recorded on the single central record.

For further information please contact your HR Provider.