Re the article (July 13) about (England’s) GTC being “plunged into chaos over fees”. How fortunate that English (and Welsh) teachers are able to exercise the option of not paying to an organisation which, as your article states, rather than being “a professional voice for teachers ... is a body set up to regulate them”. One solution that apparently is possible is for teachers south of the border to pay the fees, then for them to be reimbursed by their employers who would in turn be reimbursed by the Government.

If teachers north of the border had the option of not paying subscriptions to the GTC for Scotland, a body which is almost universally despised as irrelevant, self-justifying, self-serving and wasteful and which as far as I am aware receives only of sums taken involuntarily from teachers, I am sure that the figure would be about the same, ie only one in eight would pay. But we don’t have the option, as the subscription is taken from our pay and there’s nothing we can do about it. If the subscription were not paid, the teacher would be forbidden to teach.

The English subscription is pound;23. In Scotland, if the GTC wished to levy pound;50 or pound;500 a year, teachers would have to pay or be sacked, and we could not claim reimbursement.

David L McNally
Troon,
Ayrshire