What you need to know about the public register

One of the College's important jobs is to explain to our members what we do and how we do it. This is part of an ongoing series to explain the responsibilities of self-regulation and how we carry them out.

The public register plays two important roles - it is a useful, convenient tool for the profession and it is one of the cornerstones of our accountability to the public.

Before hiring, many employers look to the College's public register to verify a teacher's qualifications.

Members themselves look to the register to ensure that their credentials are accurate and current.

The public looks to the register for assurances that the people who teach their children are qualified and licensed by the profession's regulatory body.

The Act

The Ontario College of Teachers Act requires the College to maintain a register to which the public has access.

To protect the public interest, the College must be able to identify members correctly and provide members, employers and the public with accurate information with respect to the public register's content.

Currently, the register contains more than 385,000 registered teachers.

According to the Act, the register must contain:

each member's name, as well as the class of certificate and any additional qualifications that the member holds
the terms, conditions and limitations imposed on each certificate
a notation of every revocation, cancellation and suspension of a certificate
information that a College committee directs shall be included
information prescribed by the bylaws.

The bylaws

College bylaws determine the register's content. The College must ensure that information it receives from and about applicants and members is matched to, and placed in, the correct file and on the public register.

Bylaw 24 sets out the name(s) to appear on the register, its contents, and information that may be removed from it. Under special circumstances, members may write the Registrar to request that a different name appear on the register or that a former name be deleted, if they can show their personal safety is at risk.

Bylaw 25 stipulates that the register must also include:

the member's College registration number
whether a member is subject to any order of the Discipline or Fitness to Practise committees, and if a finding of professional misconduct, incompetence or incapacity has been made: that fact; the date of the finding; the penalty; if under appeal, a notation to that effect; and if terms, limitations or conditions have been imposed, a notation to that effect
the date on which the member's Certificates of Qualification and Registration were issued and, if applicable, the termination or expiration date
basic qualifications of the member as entered on the member's certificate
any additional qualifications of the member as entered on the member's certificate, and any program of teacher education completed by the member and entered on the member's certificate.

No personal information

The public register does not contain members' business or residence phone numbers, place of business or residence, age, family or marital status, or social insurance number – anything that might be required to apply for credit cards, bank loans, mortgages or the like.

Information available to the public is not considered confidential.

The Act protects member information confidentiality. For example, with some exceptions, College Council members and staff must keep anything that they learn about members in the course of their duties confidential or risk fines up to $25,000.

Upon their hiring, College employees sign non-disclosure agreements respecting member confidentiality. They also receive training with respect to the proper handling of member information. This particularly applies to those in Membership Services and Investigations and Hearings who routinely update member information to reflect newly earned Additional Qualifications or terms, conditions or limitations on their teaching certificates.

Although the College is not subject to either provincial or federal privacy legislation, its privacy policy limits the collection, use and disclosure of members' and applicants' personal information.

Security

The College has also implemented numerous safeguards to prevent unauthorized online access to a member's personal information. These include multiple firewalls for external security, multiple security zones within firewalls for internal security, the use of a high-encryption algorithm with certificate authentication, and intrusion-detection software to provide constant monitoring of the integrity of secure data.

The College stores all confidential information securely, either in password-protected electronic files or in locked storage filing units (on and off site). Only specifically authorized personnel have access.

Individual members may access their own information in their private account in the Members' Area of the College web site. Members are required to authenticate their identity to access their private account. No other individuals, other than specifically designated College staff, are able to gain access to this information.

The Ontario College of Teachers is not the only professional regulator with a public register. The law also requires Ontario's 23 health self-regulatory organizations to maintain registers and to make the contents available to the public.

The College, like some other professional regulators, has facilitated access to its public register through the Internet. This is a function of demand and the most cost effective way to make information available to over 200,000 members, two million parents and employers of teachers across the province and around the world.

The College's public register remains one of the most visited areas on the College's web site, with an average of 50,000 visits monthly in the 2006 calendar year.

Members can learn about the public register through the annual Member's Handbook, which is mailed to all newly qualified teachers.