Improving our Schools: Page 5

Consultation on the General Teaching Council for Scotland

Summary of proposals

22. The proposals set out above would result in the following composition:

25 elected teacher members
3 members appointed by ADES
3 members appointed by COSLA
1 member appointed by the ASC
1 member appointed by SCIS
7 members appointed by higher education institutions (including 4 TEIs)
2 representatives from the Churches
1 parents' representative
1 industry representative
1 member appointed by the Association of Directors of Social Work in Scotland
4 Ministers' nominees
49 in total

Questions: do you agree with the proposals summarised above? If not, please explain why. If you favour a smaller or larger Council please say why. If you consider that a particular "constituency" should be increased or decreased, please say why and how you would see this impacting on other areas of representation and the balance of interests on the Council.

If you consider that there are other interests not mentioned which should be represented on the GTC, please say what these are and whether you consider they should be represented through explicit nominating rights or be taken into account in Ministers' nominations.

Turnover in GTC membership

23. At the moment, all members of the GTC are appointed at the same time for a four year term. The report notes that the current Council which commenced in February 1999 has a total of 30 new members, giving rise to some concern about experience and continuity on the Council.

Question: would a rolling programme of appointments be sensible? Should this apply to places for both elected and appointed members?

24. The Scottish Executive considers that it might be particularly helpful if Ministers' nominees were able to be appointed on a different timetable, say 6 months after other appointments but still for a four year term, in order that the nominations could take into account any obvious gaps remaining after the elected and appointed members are in place.

Question: do you have a view on this suggestion?

Committee structure

25. The report recommends that largely for resource reasons the GTC's committee structure should be streamlined to provide fewer, more multi-functional committees. By reducindies on the Council.g the number of meetings and/or numbers attending, the GTC could reduce the total costs of its operations to teacher members' employers, and to the other constituent bo

26. The entire committee structure is not prescribed in the 1965 Act, but the Act does require the Council to set up certain committees, and describes their functions. These committees are:

Investigating;
Disciplinary; and
a committee which oversees applications for exceptional admission to the register.

27. The report takes the view that the current committee structure could and should be simplified even if the powers of the GTC are to be increased. The recommendations in the report are as follows:

The committees of the GTC and their areas of responsibility should be constituted as follows:

GTC Council - the supreme policy authority of the GTC;
Policy and Strategy Committee - responsible for strategic issues and the work of the current Convener's Committee;
Accreditation and Review Committee - responsible for accreditation of initial teacher education and CPD advisory responsibilities relating to the provision of courses;
Registration Committee - responsible for probation, exceptional admissions to the register and the recording of CPD and disciplinary matters;
Professional Conduct Committee - responsible for the development of policies, the review of individual cases of teacher dismissal on competence grounds, and the activities previously undertaken by the Investigating and Disciplinary committees. There would need to be two sub-committees for investigating and discipline, in order to maintain the necessary division between members fulfilling these two activities. The proposed committee could also act as the probation appeals board;
Finance and General Purposes Committee;
Education and Further Education Committee - responsible for the work of the current Education and Further Education Committees.

The recommendations in the report seem sensible, but Ministers regard this as largely an aspect for the GTC itself to consider. However, as a consequence of the proposals to extend the powers of the GTC into the area of incompetence (see paragraph 39), it will be necessary to make provision in the legislation for the GTC to consider whether teachers who have been dismissed for incompetence should have their registration withdrawn, or some intermediate sanction applied. Ministers propose that this should be done through extending the provisions relating to the existing Investigating and Disciplinary committees to include this work, through the creation of a new Professional Conduct Committee as suggested above.

Question: Do you agree with this proposal?

Increased range of sanctions in discipline cases

28. Currently, the GTC can only remove a teacher from the register on the grounds of conduct or conviction. The former is described as conduct which is infamous in a professional respect. The report notes that the 1965 Act only allows the following options in dealing with discipline cases: removal from the register; delay a decision for 2 years; or dismiss the case. From the benchmarking exercise and other evidence, the consultants conclude that the GTC should have available to it intermediate disposals.

Ministers agree that an extended range of sanctions would be useful to the GTC in carrying out this area of its business and would allow the GTC to make its dissatisfaction with a teacher's conduct known in cases which did not merit de-registration.

29. The following possible intermediate sanctions are suggested in the report:

temporary suspension;
conditional registration subject to, eg restrictions on sector or age of pupils; and
the recording of a written warning on the register.

In the case of suspension from the register, Ministers would envisage that this would be available for use if considered necessary while a case was under investigation, rather than for use as a sanction in itself following the outcome of disciplinary proceedings (eg when it was regarded as important that someone who was under investigation should not be able meantime to obtain other work as a teacher). It is already open to someone whose name has been removed from the register to apply for restoration.

Questions: are these additional sanctions the most appropriate ones? Would temporary suspension in particular be useful and workable?

Expansion of the register

30. The report concludes that the GTC's performance in maintaining the register has been satisfactory but the methods used do not yet make use of the latest technology available. The implementation of new software will improve effectiveness as will the provision of on-line access for education authorities. A number of suggestions for improvement were made to the consultants. In particular, education authorities would like the register to contain more information, including whether the teacher has any disciplinary findings against him or her, and to have better access to information which is currently maintained.

31. The register currently contains the following information:

name
registration/superannuation number, which gives the year the teacher entered the profession as a provisionally registered teacher
home address
date of birth
institution where the teacher trained
teaching qualifications and subjects in which the teacher is qualified to teach
number of days remaining of probationary period, where applicable

32. The report takes the view that the register should hold the following additional information:

sex
current employment details and record of posts held
details of degree (if separate from teaching qualification) and relevant post-graduate activity
voting category in GTC elections
outcome of any disciplinary action
whether a teacher has been dismissed on incompetence grounds or has resigned after notice of a hearing which could lead to such dismissal
a record of teachers' CPD

Ministers agree that the information held on the register should be increased as soon as possible in line with employers' requirements and recommendations in the report.

Question: is there other additional information which should be held on the register, eg ethnic origin, or whether a teacher is a registered disabled person?

The 1965 Act is not prescriptive about the contents of the register and it is left to the GTC itself to decide what information it contains. Ministers expect the GTC to implement the report's recommendations in consultation with teachers' employers and registered teachers themselves. There will need to be detailed discussion about content, arrangements for access (including on-line), updating and checking by individuals that the entries in respect of them are accurate. However, Ministers propose to include a general power in the legislation to be introduced which would allow them to prescribe in regulations, if necessary, the information which should be held on the register.

Ministers also propose that an expanded register, as described above, should be underpinned by:

an explicit requirement on the GTC to provide information from the register to the employers or prospective employers of teachers (a requirement to supply individual teachers with details of their entries would be covered by the provisions of the Data Protection Act);
an explicit requirement on the employers of registered teachers to notify the GTC of cases where registered teachers are dismissed on the grounds of misconduct or incompetence or resign in circumstances where their employers would have dismissed them, or considered dismissing them, on these grounds had they not resigned.

Amendment of the 1965 Act would be necessary to permit the full range of disciplinary sanctions to be recorded on the register, ie including suspension and de-registration, as at the moment the register can only include information on those deemed fit to teach. If the register itself was expanded in this way and employers had ready access to it, there would be no need for the SEED to continue to compile List 1R (the list of teachers refused entry to or struck off the GTC's register) which has no statutory basis.

Question: do you agree with these proposed changes in legislation, relating to an expansion of the GTC's register?

Provision to allow part-time teachers to stand for election to the GTC

33. The report notes that under the existing legislation only teachers employed on a full-time basis can stand for election to the GTC. It concludes that this is unwarranted and potentially discriminatory on gender grounds, given that most part-time teachers are female.

Ministers propose to amend legislation to remove the requirement for those standing in the GTC elections to be in full time employment.

Question: do you agree that this change should be made?

Right of appeal against decision of committee on exceptional admission to the register

34. In the case of applications for registration from teachers trained outwith Scotland, the appeal mechanisms available - appeal to the full Council - may not be robust enough to withstand challenge based on Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Article 6 requires that, in the determination of his civil rights and obligations, a person is entitled to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. This includes determination of rights to enter a profession.

Appropriate provision will be made in the Improvement in Scottish Education Bill. It seems likely that such provisions would be similar to appeals provided for in relation to decisions by the GTC's Disciplinary Committee, ie to the Court of Session. As part of the preparation of draft legislation arising from this consultation, the 1965 Act will be checked for any other provisions which might be deficient in terms of ECHR.