The Scottish government has been warned that its plans to change the way teachers are regulated could take as long as seven years to implement.
It wants to replace the General Teaching Council for Scotland with an Education Workforce Council for Scotland, which would register a wider range of education professionals - including college lecturers, school librarians and community learning and development (CLD) workers - as well as teachers.
The equivalent body in Wales - the Education Workforce Council (EWC) - has told the Scottish government that it took seven years for it to come into being after the Welsh government first consulted on the idea.
It follows warnings by the GTCS that the government’s plans to set up the new body could cost up to £7 million - money it argues would be “much better used to support front-line services that deliver learning and teaching”.
Delivering education
In a response to a government consultation on the plans, the EWC in Wales says: “The transition from Welsh government consulting on establishing the Education Workforce Council, developing legislation, opening the new body and registering and regulating the wider workforce has taken seven years in total.”
The consultation concerns the law that the government intends to introduce to give headteachers more power - the Education (Scotland) Bill.
Other responses have called for teachers to be able to deliver subjects outside their specialism and warned that if headteachers are given greater powers, exclusions could rise.
The EWC also warns against the use of the word “workforce” in the title of the new body, saying it “has connotations of production lines” and could be perceived as “de-professionalising teachers and others involved in education”.
Workforce warning
This warning comes despite the fact the EWC has “workforce” in its own title - but the Welsh regulator says it “argued strongly for the inclusion of ‘professions’ or ‘professionals’, rather than ‘workforce’”.
Scottish teaching unions argue replacing the GTCS with a workforce council risks putting years of progress on teacher professionalism into reverse.
The GTCS has taken a lead role in teacher professional development but there are concerns that a workforce council would simply be a regulator.
The EWC’s response adds: “Current registrants with GTCS - and potential registrants with any new body - are by definition ‘knowledge workers’ it seems odd and anachronistic to use terminology with connotations of production lines.
“Moreover, we note that the consultation document uses ‘professionals’, it seems odd, therefore, to choose a different catch-all in the title of the new body.”
The Scottish government has been approached for a comment.
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