PE2170: Abolish [viz replace] the General Teaching Council for Scotland
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to abolish the General Teaching Council for Scotland and replace it with a government agency.
To support the petition, please sign it. Complete the online form to give your name, postcode and email address, then receive an email, and click the link in it to verify your support. To sign, simply Click here.
The Petition was created by Paul Blaker on behalf of Accountability Scotland, and will be considered from 16 June 2025.
Background information
Many concerns have been raised about GTCS not meeting its principal legislative aims regarding:
- handling of safeguarding concerns which GTCS often dismiss as 'frivolous’, evidenced in the Professional Standards Authority’s review of the Fitness to Teach process.
- lack of action regarding credible concerns of potential widespread bullying of teachers by superiors
- concerns that the Fitness to Teach function was allowed to be weaponised unfairly against teachers
- concerns of potential collusion with one or more teacher unions to wrongly prevent or influence bona fide peer to peer teacher referrals
- Scottish Government responses to parliamentary questions, confirming awareness of specific concerns raised.
The GTCS is not supporting teachers’ professional development nor are they helping children to experience improved quality learning and teaching.
The government decided to replace Education Scotland and reform the Scottish Qualifications Authority. Now GTCS, which has presided over declining standards and serious concerns, must be abolished in the public interest to ensure that trust in teaching and their regulator is maintained.
The law etc
The GTCS was created under The Public Services Reform (General Teaching Council for Scotland) Order 2011. See here.
There are a couple of important functions:
- General functions: clause 6, item (c) to investigate the fitness to teach of individuals who are, or who are seeking to be, registered;
- Public interest: clause 7. The GTCS must have regard to the interests of the public when performing its functions.
Some History
- 22 May 2024: The General Teaching Council for Scotland appoints the Professional Standards Authority [PSA] to review their Fitness to Teach process. See here.
- 22 May 2025: The PSA makes recommendations on the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Fitness to Teach process. See here.
- 06 June 2025: Reviewing Fitness to Teach: learning about ourselves [by and about the GTCS, but published by the PSA for some reason]. Please see here for the press release. See here for the PSA'a final report.
- 16 June 2025: The petition was accepted, and published by the Scottish Government. Click here to review it.
- 24 June 2025 [posting date given as 25 July 2025]: The Scottish Government [SPICe] published the briefing for the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. To review the briefing in pdf format, click here.
- 4 July 2025: The Scottish Government responded. Click here to read the pdf.
Accountability Scotland Comments
The GTSC must eventually have recognised own its failings, and appointed the PSA. A year later they got the report.
One of the most important questions is what is meant by "independent": that is independence from interference by who and why?
On the final report we suggest that one reads Clause 4.5 which reads:
However, we recommend that GTCS gives serious consideration to review of its process guidance before entering into a formal commissioning process with a supplier, as at present we think it is too complex. We suggest that a CMS commissioning process would be greatly facilitated by the review, simplification and consolidation of much of the existing process documentation, and the creation of single process manual.
Quite who the supplier would be in Scotland needs no imagination: would that be the ever expanding SPSO ?
One solution would be to implement ISO9001 asap.
Another solution is to abolish the GTCS and replace it with a more functional entity [viz the petition].