PSA makes recommendations on the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Fitness to Teach process

The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) has completed its review of the performance, efficiency and legislative framework of the Fitness to Teach (conduct) process run by the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC Scotland). 

Our findings highlight several areas for improvement such as reducing the time it takes to resolve cases, supporting vulnerable participants, simplifying public-facing guidance and documentation, and enhancing case management. The full report is available here.

Fitness to Teach is about ensuring that teachers and college lecturers have the skills, knowledge and character to teach learners safely and effectively. As part of a project to review its Fitness to Teach Rules and processes, GTC Scotland identified that it would be helpful to have an independent review and commissioned us to conduct this review and report our findings. 

Our findings will inform the changes GTC Scotland makes to improve its Fitness to Teach process and the Rules that govern it.

We are committed to supporting the improvement of regulation within and beyond the health and care sector, both in the UK and internationally. In conducting this review, we drew on our experience of analysing regulatory legislation and policy frameworks, reviewing the performance of regulators, and developing policy on what makes professional regulation effective in protecting the public.

Alan Clamp, Chief Executive Officer said:

“GTC Scotland’s request to us for a review of its Fitness to Teach conduct process demonstrates its commitment to transparency and continuous improvement. We are pleased to have used our expertise in professional regulation to arrive at the recommendations we have made in the report. We hope that these will support GTC Scotland in prioritising and shaping its development work into the future.

We are grateful to the organisations and individuals who took the time and effort to contribute their own experiences and views of GTC Scotland’s process to our review, and to GTC Scotland for working constructively with us throughout.”

Jennifer Macdonald, Strategic Director, GTC Scotland said: 

“We said we would review our Fitness to Teach rules during our 2023 to 2028 strategic planning period. From the very beginning, we wanted the review to be thorough. We know how important this work is as a public protection and as a safeguard for the reputation of the teaching profession. 

We have over 80,000 teachers on our Register and we receive Fitness to Teach referrals for about 200 teachers each year. We remove on average 25 people a year. 

As well as issuing a call for views on general themes surrounding our rules and processes, we asked the PSA to provide an objective view of how we could improve the conduct process. We wanted to be challenged and that is what the PSA has done in this report. 

We have already begun to address some of the issues raised. Other recommendations require collaborative work with our partners at a national level. 

We will consider the PSA’s recommendations in full and we will be presenting an action plan to our Professional Regulatory Assurance Committee in due course. In the meantime, we ask all our partners and stakeholders to read the report in full and consider it in the context of the wider regulatory system in which we all operate.”

We thank the PSA for their advice and all participants for their time and feedback.” 

ENDS

Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care

Contact: media@professionalstandards.org.uk