24,000 teachers in state schools are incompetent

As many as 24,000 incompetent teachers are working in state schools, the profession's watchdog admitted today.

Keith Bartley, chief executive of the General Teaching Council for England, said urgent action was needed to retrain poor performers who had "more bad days than good".

Only 46 teachers from a workforce of 500,000 have been judged incompetent since 2001 as procedures for proving that teachers are not up to the job are so onerous.

Mr Bartley believes incompetent teachers should be moved to other schools nearby, where they would undergo intensive retraining. He said his plan was aimed at implementing Schools Secretary Ed Balls's call in the Government's Children's Plan to remove teachers whose "competence falls to unacceptably low levels".

Mr Bartley said: "We are not talking about a system in crisis. But there's a band of teachers who have more bad days than good. The issue is how do we energise people in the profession so that they don't drop into the routine." The National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations attacked the plans to move the teachers to nearby schools, saying they would merely foist bad teachers on other pupils.

NCPTA spokeswoman Margaret Morrissey said: "If these teachers are incompetent, parents will immediately say: what effect has this had on my child's education?"

The issue of how bad teachers are allowed to keep working is one of the most controversial issues in the education system. So-called "capability" procedures are so time-consuming - and traditionally viewed by headteachers as divisive in the staffroom - that many schools urge their worst teachers to resign, in return for a decent reference that enables them to get jobs in other schools.

Mr Bartley said it was very difficult to give a figure for how many incompetents were working, although estimates suggest there is at least one per school - or 24,000.

Mr Bartley's plan involves enabling heads to refer these teachers to an independent agency that would place the individual in a new school, where they would undergo the intensive retraining as part of wider moves to raise standards.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "We are clear that simply moving poor-quality teachers around is unacceptable and those who do not quickly improve will be helped to leave the profession."

To remove a bad teacher can take months, beginning with an informal process of counselling and support, followed by a more formal procedure of target-setting and classroom observation lasting up to two terms.

Teachers receive a series of warnings, leading to a final one, during this period. In particularly serious cases, a month-long accelerated process can be imposed, at the end of which the teacher may be dismissed or encouraged to resign. The last resort is referral to the GTCE, which can ban them from the profession.