24-25/24

I refer to your request for information dated 23 July 2024 (FOI 24-25/24) in which you asked for “each of the last five full financial years, how many child protection and safeguarding referrals made to the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) did not result in full investigations (after assessment against the "threshold" policy of assessing)” as well as how many of the referrals “which did not result in full investigations” were “referred to the police” and “if all relevant council [sic] were informed of these” which we have handled under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FOISA).

We indicated on 26 July that due to the significant amount of time and resources that would be spent locating, retrieving and interrogating the 404 identified records we determined that section 12(1) of FOISA would apply due to the excessive cost of compliance. We provided a detailed Fees Notice and advised that if you were to amend the scope of your original request this would reduce the amount and bring it within the £100 exemption.

On 15 August you indicated this request could be restricted to the 2023/24 Registration Year with the criteria of whether “local councils” were informed of the referral to remain. Whilst this would still exceed the £100 exemption under section 12(1) of FOISA, we agreed to waive this fee as part of our duty to provide advice and assistance under section 15 of FOISA.

We have now collected information on the number of conduct referrals which were made in the Registration Year of 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 and provide it within this response.

In the 2023/24 Registration ear there were 164 fitness to teach referrals made related to conduct. Of those referrals, 105 were interpreted as relating to child protection and / or safeguarding. Please note that the terms “child protection” and “safeguarding” are not specific categories which form part of the initial referral procedure under our Fitness to Teach process. We have interpreted child protection widely as referrals related in any way to protecting individual children identified as suffering or likely to suffer from significant harm and safeguarding as any action taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Of the 105 referrals related to child protection and/or safeguarding, 36 did not result in full investigations.

Of these 36 referrals, in 7 of these cases it was the Local Authority employer that referred the matter to us and so the Local Authority was already aware of the allegations. Four of the cases related to an applicant seeking to join our Register and therefore there was no Local Authority employer to notify. In 3 cases, the referral was received from other bodies which had already informed the relevant Local Authority employer of the allegations. Of the 22 remaining referrals, in 13 cases the relevant local authority employer was notified that there would be no investigation following the referral whilst in 9 cases the employer was not notified due to privacy concerns. Of these 9 referrals, 8 related to a Local Authority and 1 related to a private nursery.

For context, please note that in all 105 cases related to child protection or safeguarding in 2023/24 we assessed whether a referral to the relevant authorities was necessary due to child protection concerns. Of the 69 referrals related to child protection or safeguarding in 2023/24 which resulted in investigation, 3 were referred to Police Scotland. Of the 36 referrals which did not result in full investigations, none were assessed as needing to be reported to relevant authorities due to child protection concerns.

By way of advice and assistance, you may also be interested in a Fitness to Teach insight report which we have published on our work investigating concerns raised with us about teachers between 2018 and 2023.

You may contact informationgovernance@gtcs.org.uk if you are dissatisfied with this response, to request GTC Scotland conduct a review of it. You should describe the original request and explain your grounds of review. You have 40 working days from receipt of this response 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.