23-24/84

I refer to your request for information dated 29 January 2024 (FOI 23 - 24 / 84) in which you asked for information on Fitness to Teach statistics since 2022. We requested clarification on 29 and 30 January to which you responded on both days.

Specifically, you asked for information on how many Fitness to Teach referrals have been made by members of the public since 1 January 2022 to present, how many of these included allegations that a child was harmed as the result of the conduct and how many of these were investigated by GTC Scotland after being referred.

We requested clarification from you on the kinds of harm considered under your request with specific examples however you were unable to provide any. You responded that your request considers any “allegation that a child has been harmed as a result of an alleged act or lack of action taken by a registered teacher” to include “physical, psychological or whatever harm has been alleged caused to a child or learner.”

You also clarified that you wanted to know whether GTC Scotland categorised harm into “harm” and “significant harm” and that we should provide a breakdown of these categories across each of your three queries. I can confirm that these are not categories which are used by GTC Scotland.

We also specified in our request for clarification that we would have to spend excessive resources locating, retrieving and providing the information which would incur a fee under section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act. We suggested that you limit the scope of your request for statistics from October 2022 to present to fall under the £100 limit under which no charge is made. Instead, you have attempted to submit two individual requests for records from January 2022 to December 2022 and from January 2023 to December 2023. Please note that these requests would be treated cumulatively on appeal, however, for the sake of convenience we have elected to deal with the request singularly under our duty to provide assistance under section 15 of FOISA and waive the fee in this instance.

Please see our response to each of your queries below.

You asked for the number of Fitness to Teach referrals which have been made by members of the public since 1 January 2022 to the date of your request being 29 January 2024. Within that time-period, there were 116 referrals made by members of the public.

You also asked for the number of these referrals which included allegations that a child had been harmed in any way as a result of the conduct. Of the 116 referrals received, in 66 of them it was alleged that a child or young person had been harmed in some way. We have taken a broad interpretation of “harm” as you requested.

Finally, you asked how many of these were investigated by GTC Scotland after being referred. Of the 66 referrals, 23 were (or are being) investigated. A decision whether or not to investigate 6 of these referrals had not been made as at 29 January 2024.

I hope this information is helpful. If you are dissatisfied with this response, you may contact informationgovernance@gtcs.org.uk to request GTCS conduct a review of this decision. You should describe the original request and explain your grounds of review. You have 40 working days from receipt of this decision to submit a review request. When the review process has been completed, if you are still dissatisfied, you may use the Scottish Information Commissioner's guidance on making an appeal to make an appeal to the Commissioner.