It is a year since the fledgling General Teaching Council (GTC) for England started to hear complaints about teachers. Since then 20 teachers have come before its disciplinary committee for their competence or conduct, and ultimately their fitness to continue teaching. Seventeen more cases are pending.

First up before a disciplinary hearing was John Cole, 58, a religious studies teacher who had sworn at and insulted pupils at the Grange comprehensive school in Shrewsbury. Those that followed included Jane Kershaw, sacked from Merley primary in Wimborne, Dorset, after being found drinking vodka in the school’s boiler room.

The GTC only handles cases involving sacked teachers or those who have resigned over misconduct. Before it was created in 2000, sacked teachers could turn up later in another school and carry on where they had left off. The council, however, has the power to bar them from teaching for life.

Though pupils, parents or fellow staff complained about the teachers who appeared before it, the GTC could hear the cases only because they were passed on, as now required by law, by the teachers’ local authority employer. However, questions are being raised about why a body responsible for registering England’s 500,000 state teachers will not investigate complaints directly from parents.

Carol Adams, the GTC chief executive, admits some parents assume that the council will take direct complaints from parents, much like the General Medical Council takes complaints about doctors from patients. One parent a week calls the GTC with concerns about their child’s education.

The GTC can punish poor conduct and competence by issuing a reprimand, ordering retraining or making a suspension order. Teachers can be struck off for up to two years and are then either automatically reinstated or have to reapply to be considered for the register again. But Adams says the GTC is not an investigatory body.

The GTC for Scotland, founded in 1965, has always taken complaints from parents. “We do our own investigating,” says Glenise Borthwick, a spokesman for the Scottish GTC. “We don’t think we can claim to protect professional standards unless we can investigate complaints ourselves, including those from parents.”

Adams says “robust” measures are already in place in schools to deal with parents’ complaints about teachers. The GTC advises parents who call it to use the existing procedure and complain to the head in the first instance, then to the school governors, the local education authority and, ultimately, the education secretary.

Maria Carlton, policy manager with the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, disagrees that the apparatus is adequate. She deals with many families who feel schools and local authorities close ranks when they complain about teachers.

“We get many parents coming to us and saying that relations with the school have broken down and they are getting nowhere,” says Carlton. “They have been through the complaints procedure and say they don’t know what to do now, and that there is nowhere to go.”

Yvonne Spencer, of the Children’s Legal Centre, which deals with parents’ complaints every day, says: “Complaints about individual teachers range from assault, bullying and humiliation to improper use of sanctions. And the complaints process is limited.”

Carlton was heartened by suggestions last month from the former chief schools inspector Mike Tomlinson that what parents need is their own ombudsman.

The GTC holds its disciplinary hearings in public. So at least we know John Cole and Jane Kershaw were each struck off for two years. However, it is hard not to see parental demands increasing for the right to complain directly to the GTC unless a credible alternative such as an ombudsman is implemented soon.