Scotland’s teaching watchdog has revealed that Brexit will see it blocked from accessing a shared database where checks can be carried out on EU teachers wishing to work in Scotland.
Currently, when teachers from outside the EU apply to work in Scotland, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) has to carry out background checks - a process that can be very time-consuming.
After Brexit, the GTCS is predicting it will have to carry out these checks on teachers from EU countries - as well as non-EU countries - because it will lose access to the Internal Market Information database, which “allows countries across the EU to share information about individuals who are prohibited from working in certain professions”.
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The body also says Brexit will “increase our administrative workload” because EU teachers will no longer be automatically registered and will have to participate in the same registration process as “rest of world” countries.
In the GTCS Annual Report and Financial Statements 2018-19 - included in the papers for the GTCS council meeting this week - the body said: “The potential implications of Brexit have focused our minds during this reporting period on how we will continue to register potential teachers from the European Union (EU) post Brexit.
“Currently, we are obliged by law to register teachers from other EU countries whereas teachers from countries in the rest of the world have to participate in a different registration process. Brexit will end this arrangement. We will then revert to our rest-of-world processes for all teachers. This will increase our administrative workload, although it will also allow us to operate one process for all teachers.”
The GTCS report adds: “One other outcome of Brexit will be that we will lose access to the Internal Market Information (IMI) database which allows countries across the EU to share information about individuals who are prohibited from working in certain professions. This will require us to work closely with individual countries to gather this information about registrants (for example via police checks), as we currently do with rest-of-world countries.”
The GTCS papers state that each year “hundreds of teachers and lecturers request registration with GTC Scotland “
It said it registered 868 teachers who had qualified outside of Scotland last year, a rise of over 70 per cent on the previous year when 503 overseas teachers registered with the body.
The Scottish government warned earlier this year that Brexit could have “serious ramifications” for the teacher recruitment crisis in Scotland and “seriously impede” the drive to close the attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils.
The Scottish government said “uncertainty about Brexit” was making it more difficult to attract European teachers to Scotland and that, should the 500-plus teachers from the EU working in Scotland leave, “it would almost double the pressure on teacher recruitment”.
