BACKGROUND
The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) was one of the first teaching councils in the world when it was set up in 1965. In 2012, legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament made it the world’s first independent, self-regulating body for teaching.
GTCS carries out a wide range of statutory functions to promote, support and develop the professional learning of teachers. These include:
- Maintaining a register of teachers in Scotland
- Setting the professional standards expected of all teachers
- Accrediting programmes leading to the award of GTCS Standards, including Initial Teacher Education programmes at Scottish universities
- Advising the Scottish Government on matters relating to Scotland’s teachers and teacher professionalism
- Providing public protection and assuring the high quality of the teaching profession by investigating and adjudicating the Fitness to Teach of registrants through robust and fair regulation processes
C2 have worked as a long-term partner to GTCS on programs that support these functions and in the last 12 months have worked on the MyPL project. The central aim of the MyPL initiative is to offer a flexible, easily accessible system for teachers to log and reflect upon their professional learning activities.