A BID to standardise the role of continuing professional development in gaining promotion created a heated debate at the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association’s conference in Aviemore.
Members heard of wildly varying and inconsistent examples, such as job adverts for headteachers regularly asking for fewer qualifications than those for chartered teachers.
Views were so split between those backing a motion for CPD to be a pre-requisite of promotion and those who felt experience was qualification enough, that the motion had to be sent back to the association’s executive for further consideration. Proposing the motion, John Guidi of the SSTA’s Renfrew branch, criticised the level of inconsistency. One teacher he spoke to, who failed to win a promoted post, said she would rather undergo another 20-minute interview than the lengthy and expensive route of becoming a chartered teacher to further her career.
He said establishing a consistent and systematic CPD qualification structure for all promoted posts was essential for a career in teaching to remain professional.
Rob Hands, of the Perth and Kinross branch, said years of teaching experience should remain qualification enough for a promoted post and welcomed different routes to promotion.
“That is something which has been a tradition in Scottish education for a long time and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it,” he said. “There are many things that contribute to the search for talent in management.”
