The GTC Scotland Register - Registration Snapshot Report

Information about our registrants

When an individual is on our Register they are called a registrant.

Registrants and registrations

Table 1 shows the total number of registrants along with the number of registrations held by them. There are more registrations than registrants as some teachers are registered in more than one category of registration.

We can see from this that both the total number of registrants and the total number of registrations have been relatively stable over the 2023-2024 registration year.

Of potential interest is that the number of registrations has decreased at a larger rate than the decrease in the number of registrants, influencing us to begin to explore the number of registrations held by individuals leaving our register.

Table 2 shows the number of registrants who hold registration in each of the registration categories

*historical registration categories that are valid but no longer in use.

GTC Scotland has four statuses of registration:

Table 3 shows the number of individual registrants, broken down by registration status. The numbers of individual registrants with Provisional Registration and Provisional (Conditional) Registration are included together in the Provisionally registered row.

Over registration year 2023-24, 3,045 registrants transitioned from being provisionally registered to holding full registration (general) status.

There was a:

0.40% increase in the Fully registered registrants (Full (General) Registration) and 3,045 registrants transitioned from provisional registration to full registration
4.68% decrease in provisionally registered registrants
8.80% decrease in fully registered (associate) registrants

Registrant sex and age

We hold information on the age of registrants and ask registrants for specific information about their sex. Registrants self-declare specific information and so the statistics we hold are based on the information we receive from them.

Table 4 shows the self-declared sex of registrants at both the 31 March 2023 and 31 March 2024 with chart 1 and chart 2 showing this as a percentage of total registrants.

Chart 1: Registrant self-declared sex at 31 March 2023 – all registrants

Pie chart showing: Female = 77.5%, Male = 22.3%, No sex recorded or prefer not to say: 0.2%

Chart 2: Registrant self-declared sex at 31 March 2024 – all registrants

Pie chart showing: Female = 77.6%, Male = 22.4%, No sex recorded or prefer not to say: <0.1%

From the self-declared sex of registrants, we can see that the composition of our Register has remained relatively constant over registration year 2023-24 with it being significantly female dominated.

Charts 3 to 6 show the self-declared sex of registrants as a percentage by registration category held as at 31 March 2024.

It can be seen from these charts that the difference in the percentage of females compared to males in each registration category varies. In order from largest difference between the percentage of females and the percentage of males to smallest difference, the registration categories are arranged Primary Education, then Additional Support Needs, followed by Secondary (Subject) Education, with the smallest percentage difference being Further Education.

In all categories, less than one percent of registrants chose ‘prefer not to say’.

Chart 3: Registrant self-declared sex at 31 March 2024 – Primary Education

Pie chart showing: Female = 89.8%, Male = 10.2%, No sex recorded or prefer not to say: <0.1%

Chart 4: Registrant self-declared sex at 31 March 2024 – Additional Support Needs

Pie chart showing: Female = 86.3%, Male = 13.7%, No sex recorded or prefer not to say: <0.1%

Chart 5: Registrant self-declared sex at 31 March 2024 – Secondary (Subject) Education

Pie chart showing: Female = 66.1%, Male = 33.8%, No sex recorded or prefer not to say: 0.1%

Chart 6: Registrant self-declared sex at 31 March 2024 – Further Education

Pie chart showing: Female = 57.8%, Male = 41.7%, No sex recorded or prefer not to say: 0.5%

Table 5 summarises the percentage of registrants in the following age bandings rounded to the nearest percentage and chart 7 shows the information for 31 March 2024.

*(Rounding to the nearest percentage means that these do not total 100%)

Chart 7: Percentage of registrants within each age band – all registrants

Bar chart showing age groups: 18-25 = 5%, 26-45 = 12%, 31-35 = 14%, 36-40 = 15%, 41-45 = 14%, 46-50 = 12%, 51-55 = 11%, 56-60= 9%, 61-65 = 5%, 66-70 = 2%, 71-75 = 1%, 76-100 = <0.1%

The age bandings of registrants shows that three-fifths of the Register is under 46 years old (60%), over one-fifth is between 46 and 55 years old (23%), and almost one-fifth is over 55 years old (17%).

Further sex and age information for registrants broken into registration categories held is shown below.

Tables 6-9 show self-declared sex and age information for each of the registration categories.

These tables show the average (and median) ages of teachers registered in the category of primary education and/or secondary (subject) education being very similar. Almost all averages for these categories fall within the 41-45 age bracket.

The data shows that the average age is older for registrants in the further education and additional support needs categories. Average ages for additional support needs fall within the 46-50 age bracket with average ages for further education mostly falling within the 51-55 age bracket.

This information should be used to support teacher workforce planning.

GTC Scotland’s Council recently approved a plan to begin gathering equality and diversity information from registered teachers with the aim of better understanding some of the protected characteristics of Scotland’s teachers.

Equality survey of provisionally registered teachers

Over time this data will enhance understanding about the individual characteristics of teachers and impact on the Register of Teachers.

Employers of registrants

Table 10 shows the number of registrants by employer group. This information is self-declared by registrants.

Registrants under the employer category of ‘supply’ are those who have not specified an employer. This supply figure does not include registrants who have told us that they are working as a supply teacher and who have shared an employer group with us (e.g. local authority/ies)- this is included elsewhere.

We can see from this employment information, self-declared by registrants, that the largest employer of registrants remains local authorities in Scotland. There is growth in the number of registrants stating that they are employed by local authorities in Scotland, independent schools, colleges in Scotland, non-UK schools, in supply roles (where the registrant has not shared information about who employs them) and in higher education institutions. There has also been an increase in the number of registrants who declare that they are not currently working. A greater number of Registrants are choosing to update their records to provide their employment information and this is positive.