Teachers are calling for Scotland’s teaching watchdog to be ditched or have its remit reduced after it increased registration fees by 30 per cent.
An online survey started by a teacher, quizzing school staff about their response to the hike in General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) fees, attracted 5,000 overwhelmingly negative responses in just a matter of hours.
Athole McLauchlan, a primary teacher, released the results of his survey on Wednesday night. Overall, 4,885 respondents (98 per cent) said they were unhappy with the GTCS’s decision to raise the annual fee from £50 to £65 from April.
Only 94 were “not bothered” and 21 said they backed the increase. On social media, some said the widespread anger about the increase marked a “tipping point” in teachers’ relations with the GTCS.
Research commissioned by the GTCS in 2014 found half of over 2,200 teachers surveyed said they would not continue to register, or did not know if they would continue to register, if it were not compulsory. For those who said they would not continue to register, the cost of registration was cited as a key factor.
Scotland’s largest teaching union, meanwhile, is calling on the GTCS to dip into its “significant cash reserves” to reduce any fees increase.
The General Teaching Council for England was abolished in 2010 but Scotland’s GTCS is still going strong - it was one of the first teaching councils in the world and recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.
Meanwhile, the teaching unions have questioned whether teachers should be covering the cost of the schemes like My Professional Learning, the online professional learning log; the student teacher placement service; and activity related to the one year teacher induction scheme.
According to the EIS, 90 per cent of GTCS funds are raised through registrant fees.
EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan told TESS the increase had left many teachers “frustrated and angry”. He added: “The EIS believes an increase of 30 per cent in GTCS fees is unacceptably high, especially at a time when teachers’ pay has been declining in real terms. We are aware that the GTCS has significant cash reserves and we believe that it should be seeking to use this money to reduce any fee increase.”
SSTA general secretary Seamus Searson said: “We are unhappy that there has been such a big jump in the fee at a time when teachers’ pay has been held back. The question needs to be asked about what the GTCS does with its money over and above the [teachers’] register and accreditation of teacher training.”
The GTCS responded, in a letter to teachers, by saying that its fee remains lower than other professional bodies and the rise, which was the first increase since 2013, amounted to just £1.25 per month.
A spokesperson for the council told TES: “The fee is increasing for the first time in almost four years by £1.25 per month from £50 to £65.
“Our planned financial strategy over these four years has been to run down reserves to the minimum level set by our Council members in line with best practice set out by the charity regulator, OSCR and to avoid increasing the fee in the intervening years.
“This unanimous decision was taken by our Council members, the majority of whom are elected and registered teachers, and members of teacher trade unions, all of whom have a good understanding of the challenges currently faced by teachers.
“The new fee level is still significantly below that of most professional regulatory bodies and the cost of being a member of many trade unions. The new fee will help to continue and enhance the range of services GTCS provides to its registrants and the wider public.”
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