Scotland’s teaching watchdog, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), has revealed that it plans to increase its registration fee from April 2025 “to fund improvements to our services while ensuring our financial sustainability”.
The plans are revealed in the GTCS annual report, published last week. However, there is no indication of how large or small the fee increase will be.
The GTCS says a detailed financial report will be considered by its finance and corporate services committee this month, then by the GTCS council in December. At this point the GTCS council “will decide how it wants to proceed”.
After this decision any changes will be communicated to registrants.
GTCS fee increase ‘likely’
A GTCS spokesperson said: “Any decision to change the registration fee is made by our council. In preparation for the introduction of our strategic plan in 2023 it was identified that a fee increase part way through the five-year period would be likely.”
The spokesperson said the improvements that the increase would help to fund included “a service redesign project that will deliver significant improvements to the functionality and efficiency of the external-facing services we provide to registrants”.
He also said that the body was “updating some of the frameworks that underpin out core functions” and that other initiatives were planned over the five-year strategic period from 2023 to 2028.
The GTCS is funded predominantly from fees paid by teachers, who are required to be registered in order to teach in Scotland.
The registration fee that teachers and college lecturers pay has remained at £65 since 2017. The body says this is the longest period it has operated without an increase.
The last time the GTCS fee was increased - in 2017 it went from £50 to £65 - many teachers responded with anger; an online survey started by a teacher attracted 5,000 overwhelmingly negative responses in a matter of hours.
Ken Muir, who was GTCS chief executive at the time, condemned the “vitriol and bile” directed at GTCS staff in the wake of the decision to increase the fee.
More than 80,000 teachers were registered in 2023-24, generating income of £5.43 million.
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