A “global success story” of Scottish education is under attack from plans that risk putting years of progress on teacher professionalism into reverse, the country’s biggest teaching union will say today.
The EIS is concerned that proposals to replace the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) with a body also covering non-teaching jobs in education would diminish teachers’ influence while shifting power to central government.
The union has shared with Tes Scotland views that it is publishing today in response to the government’s Education Bill, which includes plans for an Education Workforce Council for Scotland (EWCS). The union said that the GTCS was “internationally recognised as a success story” and that the government should not be “seeking to undermine and control it” by centralising power and the support that the GTCS provides for teacher CPD.
The union also objects to plans for the teacher majority on the GTCS council to disappear in the new body.
Larry Flanagan, EIS general secretary, said: “What right does the Scottish government have to remove that democratic accountability to the profession?”
The EIS is not opposed to other education staff having a professional standards body, but does not want a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
It questioned the timing of “this attack on the GTCS” after it had been “resolute in upholding professional standards in the face of the Scottish government’s flirtation with Teach First” - the controversial teacher-training charity - and other fast-track routes into teaching.
Mr Flanagan said the union would defend the GTCS “in the face of this unwarranted interference by Scottish government on its independence”.
Professor Graham Donaldson, a former senior chief inspector, told Tes Scotland that, since the publication of his highly influential 2011 report on teacher education, Teaching Scotland’s Future, the GTCS had gone from “an organisation making sure those in front of young people are competent and fit to do the job, to [one] taking a lead in relation to professional growth and development and career-long professional learning”.
But he added: “The risk is that a workforce council could see the GTCS revert to regulator, and the demands of regulating a very diverse workforce could overtake the developing role of the GTCS as a force in the leadership of professional growth and professional learning.”
However, this is “not inevitable”, Professor Donaldson said, and the idea of a body for all those working in education is “quite sensible”, but “we have to be very careful we don’t lose what we have got”.
This week the GTCS said it had formed a group to consider “the range of legal, financial and operational issues and risks” in the changes, with its final consultation submission likely to be published in late January.
A Scottish government spokesman said: “The Education Workforce Council offers the opportunity to have a national system to ensure the full range of practitioners have the skills and expertise required to do their job effectively. A strategic working group has been established with relevant stakeholders from GTCS and the Standards Council for Community Learning and Development for Scotland to consider the implications of establishing the Education Workforce Council, including its impact on the GTCS.”
This is an edited version of an article in the 1 December edition of Tes Scotland. Subscribers can read the full story here. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here. Tes Scotland magazine is available at all good newsagents.
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