We have received some queries recently about our role in child protection. These queries have sometimes confused our role as the teaching profession’s registration and regulation body, with the role of teachers’ employers, and suggested a need for increased understanding of the broader landscape of child protection in Scotland.
Teacher employers i.e. local authorities, independent schools and colleges, have processes and procedures to manage child protection concerns effectively – it is important that this happens locally, as close to an issue as possible. Employers can take immediate protective action that GTC Scotland cannot. For instance, they can immediately remove an individual from a context.
Employers cannot, however, manage wider, future risk by ensuring that a teacher is removed from the teaching profession as a whole, where this is necessary. GTC Scotland can. Thanks to the teaching profession campaigning in the 1960s to become a self-regulating profession, an individual can be removed by GTC Scotland from the Register of Teachers which means they cannot teach in any school in Scotland.
GTC Scotland’s role is to help maintain trust in the teaching profession. We do this by keeping the Register of Teachers and setting and regulating the standards for entry to, and continued inclusion on, the Register. Our regulation work is required to be proportionate and targeted.
When we receive a query that has confused our role or suggested a need for increased understanding of the broader landscape in which we work, we always endeavour to clarify our specific role in our response. GTC Scotland operates in a unique space in Scottish education: an independent and statutory space. We will continue our work to improve understanding of our role in the education system and to help maintain trust in the teaching profession.
We publish all our freedom of information responses on our website.
