Reviewing Fitness to Teach: learning about ourselves 

The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has just completed a review of the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s (GTC Scotland) Fitness to Teach conduct process. GTC Scotland’s Strategic Director, Jennifer Macdonald outlines the reason behind the review, the approach taken and next steps. 

Introduction 

As the independent regulator for teachers in Scotland, we maintain a register of teachers and investigate serious concerns about the conduct or professional competence of teachers on the register or applying to be on it, through our Fitness to Teach process.  

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. 

We need to have Fitness to Teach Rules in place to meet the requirements of our governing legislation and to ensure we carry out our Fitness to Teach work fairly and lawfully.    

Reviewing our rules 

In our strategic plan for 2023 to 28, Trusted Teaching, we committed to carrying out a review of our Fitness to Teach Rules. It is important that they’re reviewed regularly to make sure they’re working as well as they should and that they align with best regulatory practice. The current rules, which set out the legal framework for when and how we investigate Fitness to Teach referrals and how the outcomes of cases are determined, were enacted in 2017.  

We decided early on that the initial discovery and analysis phase of the project should include an independent review of the effectiveness of our Fitness to Teach conduct process. This would give us an objective perspective on how it was working. We had encountered the work of the PSA through our attendance and involvement in various regulatory forums, in which they had shared their knowledge of professional regulation and performance, embodied by their Standards of Good Regulation. We were also aware that they had undertaken reviews such as this, for other professional regulators in the UK and beyond.  

Terms of reference 

Once we had established that PSA would carry out the review, the first half of 2024 was spent defining the terms of reference for the review and working out what the PSA would need access to, to help them understand us and our work better.  

While we investigate both conduct and competence-related referrals about teachers, we agreed that it would be more useful to focus the review on conduct matters only, as they make up the majority of our caseload. We therefore focused the scope of the review on three main aspects: 

1. A performance review of our Fitness to Teach conduct process, against Standards 14-18 of PSA’s own Standards for Good Regulation (adapted so as to be appropriate for our context)  
2. A review of the operational efficiency of the process   
3. A review of the legislation, rules and guidance relating to the Fitness to Teach process.  

We also shared with them details of our stakeholders whose views we felt would offer independent insight into the various perspectives of those involved in the process.  

The bigger picture 

Later on in the year, we issued our own call for views from interested parties on general themes surrounding our rules and processes to help us to determine how the overall framework is working. These focused on four main themes: 

1. Interpreting and applying the Fitness to Teach Rules  
2. The resources we provide to support understanding and participation   
3. Experiences of participating in the Fitness to Teach process  
4. Ensuring that we respect the rights of children and young people who are involved in the process  

A report of the responses we received is available on our website along with further information about our rules review and where the PSA’s work fits in. 

Final report 

We received the PSA’s report of their findings in April 2025, at which point our next step was to share it internally with our governing Council and relevant oversight committee, the Professional Regulatory Assurance committee, at their meeting in May. 

Their response was positive. They acknowledged what we already felt, which was that we had taken a brave step by commissioning the review. We knew it would be a rigorous process - we wanted to be constructively challenged and that is what the PSA has done. 

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

Next steps  

We expect there to be a great deal of interest in what we do now but it’s important to remember that this report is part of a wider project. We will consider the PSA’s recommendations in full and in the context of the wider review that they will inform.  We will present an action plan for the next phase of our review to our Professional Regulatory Assurance Committee.  

We know how important this work is as a public protection and as a safeguard for the reputation of the teaching profession and we are committed to delivering real, effective change to our Fitness to Teach process through this review. We thank the PSA for their advice and all participants for their time and feedback.  

The full report is available to download below.