Your Progress
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There are a number of organisations, regulations, policies and legislation you should be aware of as a practitioner. Some of these are discussed below.
Ofsted
Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) inspects and regulates services that care for children and young people, and services providing education and skills for learners of all ages. Your organisation should have polices and procedures that enables it to meet a number of regulations and legislation. The quality of your provision and how you execute these polices is monitored by Ofsted and other regulators such as local authorities. Ofsted is also in charge of registering regulated services such as child minders and early years providers.
Local Authorities
Local authorities have a duty of supporting and protecting children from harm. They also have a duty of making sure every child whose education they are responsible for is adequately supported to achieve their potential.
Health and Safety
Your practice should be ethical. Do not expose service users, staff and yourself to any unnecessary risks. You have to ensure you carry out risk assessments to ensure the environment is safe in line with the Health and Safety Act 1974. You might be expected to report any injuries to your learners, customers and staff especially if this occurs at your premises in line with the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR).
It is also worthwhile considering other legislation that protects and safeguards learners such as the also Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 which established the legal basis for the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) and the Disclosure and Barring Service. Depending on your setting, the principles of the green paper “Every Child Matters’ might apply. The green paper stresses the importance of information sharing between agencies and promotes a framework of services, which will support every child. Also depending on the organisation you work the Education Act 2011 might apply helping practitioners maintain good discipline, using resources fairly and freedoms for schools and colleges.
Confidentiality
As a practitioner, it is essential you maintain confidentiality in line with your organisation registration with the Information Commissioners Office and the Data Protection Act 1998. Learner’s personal information should be protected and not shared with anyone who is not authorised. This can be done by locking away the information, ensuring there a secure password on all the gadgets you use to access confidential information.
Also make sure you have a password on any memory sticks you have just in case this gets lost. You will be expected to encourage your assessors to also maintain confidentiality and not include any sensitive information as part of assessments. It is important to ensure your records are accurate and appropriate. Your learners have a right to access their information. It is also worthwhile to bear in mind that if you work for any public body the Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives members of public the right to request information which might be considered in the public interest such as the number of staff. The consequences of not respecting confidentiality could be very severe. You need to consider this from a number of some perspectives.
Learners could lose confidence in your organisation if you break confidentiality which could result in bad reputation. Think of the recent negative press regarding big companies such as TalkTalk and Tesco when their services were hacked.
You could also be sued and fined by the Information Commissioner. They famously fined Google for collecting information without the owners permission. You, therefore, need to ensure you are not asking any information that is not relevant to their enrolment such as wanting to know if a learner is in a relationship or any other inappropriate personal information.Awarding bodies and other regulators could also sanction your
Awarding bodies and other regulators could also sanction your organisation for confidentiality which might result in loss of contracts. You, therefore, need to embrace the importance of maintaining confidentiality and data protection.
Equality
It is important for teachers to fully embrace the Equality Act 2010 as part of your practice. You have to ensure that learners have access to resources, facilities and treated fairly particularly when it comes to assessments. Awarding bodies will want you to make a statement about inclusion and equal opportunities. They might want to know how you are promoting and monitoring equality.
When thinking about equality consider how your organisation and practice satisfies all the protected characteristics. You could start by examining the resources you have in place. Are they offensive, stereotypical or delegatory in any way? Changes will need to be made if you find anything negative.
It is also your task to ensure that your staff embrace equality. You could also consider the timing of workshops or classroom-based work. If you are working in the adult sector, have you considered the needs of all your learners? Other considerations include an understanding of cultural and religious needs. It is quite known that some candidates who are Muslim or Jewish might not want to be doing activities during a Friday afternoon. The same can be said for learners who belong to Jehovah’s witness who might find it hard to attend workshops on a Saturday.
You might also want to ensure there is disabled access and the needs of those with medical needs such as diabetes are addressed during course delivery.
You need to ensure you comply with the law and remember not to over do it which could result in reverse exclusion. For example, teachers spending more time with learners with learning needs at the expensive of those who do not have.
When thinking about equality please also consider the Human Rights Act 1998 and its principles. You also need to consider aspect such as safeguarding. How are you protecting your young learners? How have you also address the PREVENT agenda in your work setting?
Complaints and Grievances
You will be expected to follow the complaints and grievances procedure in place. This should be accessible to both your service users and staff. You should also allow access to your customers and any third parties you network with. These procedures should be clear and state what exactly needs to happen and time scales from when a complaint is raised. Each and every organisation will have its own procedures which suits its needs and services. The general gist is for you to explain all the procedures to service users and other stake holders.