Debate contribution: General Teaching Council Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 2 December 2025.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

2 December 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

General Teaching Council Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5271746

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I speak on behalf of my Education Committee colleague, Cara Hunter. She is unwell, so I am stepping in. That is the reason that she is not in the Chamber. Clearly, I am not on the Education Committee, so I was not involved in any of the pre-legislative scrutiny, but the Education Minister loves to debate with and hear from me, so I made a special effort to come to the Chamber today to talk to him. The General Teaching Council Bill is important legislation, and we want to hear more about it. It is not a Bill that we can endorse today, albeit we are not minded to divide on it. However, it is important that the Opposition put some robust questions and concerns on the record, and, assuming that the Bill proceeds through Second Reading to Committee Stage, those issues will need to be answered by the Committee. It is somewhat concerning that the Opposition have to set the concerns on the record now, but I trust that the Committee will engage on all the questions. The Committee Chair, Nick Mathison, mentioned that a couple of specific questions came up in the Committee's pre-legislative session. The SDLP Opposition and I also have those questions. The Minister touched on the first question in his opening remarks: why not do what his predecessor, his colleague Michelle McIlveen, who was just in the Chamber, had said would happen and wind up the General Teaching Council NI entirely and replace it with a new body? I understand, as the Minister said, that he received advice that suggested two things. First, it suggested that the culture, performance and staffing level of the GTCNI had improved radically over the past couple of years. That is good to hear, but I am sure that the Committee will want to understand, unpack and challenge that advice in detail to be persuaded of that. Secondly, he said that his approach is, effectively, a quicker and more cost-effective way to achieve the improvements covered by the Baker Tilly Mooney Moore — that is a bit of a mouthful — review. That may well be true, and, if anything can be done in a more cost-effective and straightforward way, why not do that? Indeed, that should be the priority. The review was robust and clear that the organisation, as the Minister acknowledged, had spent years in special measures and had never fulfilled in any real way the provisions that were given to it in the 1998 Order. The consultants' judgement was absolutely scathing:

"It is our opinion that GTCNI is irretrievably broken and there is no prospect of recovery to any form of adequate performance"

and that the Department of Education:

"should move to dissolve GTCNI with immediate effect."

That is a call not for restructuring or reform but for complete dissolution.

I am reading from the report, and it says the:

"General Teaching Council For Northern Ireland".

Obviously, it had specific complaints about the board. On the face of it, we cannot support the Bill, but we acknowledge that it will go to the Committee, and the Committee should ask those questions. The purpose of the Second Stage debate is to indicate whether the Bill has the overarching support of the Assembly. We are indicating that we cannot give our overarching support at this point, but we recognise that the Bill will go to Committee Stage. I suggest that the Committee members need to ask those questions, because advice has gone to the Minister that said, "Be assured that performance has improved over the last couple of years, and we now advise you, Minister, that it is possible to make the requisite improvements by changing the structure of the board and inserting a public appointments process, rather than the election process" — the teaching unions are not thrilled about that — "and we are persuaded that that will deliver the changes we need to the General Teaching Council". We shall see.

We should not simply wave the Bill through without interrogating that. The Bill will now go to Committee Stage, and it will be for the Committee to interrogate that. The Committee Chair wants to come in.

699 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:06 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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