General Teaching Council for Scotland

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.

Using Dynamics to Raise Teaching Standards

SOLUTION

The solution is based on C2’s Subscribe360 platform, which is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is focused on member tools within Dynamics 365. The platform was specialised further to meet the specific requirements of the MyPL initiative.

Elements of the solution include:

• Centralised management of registrants (teachers) and stakeholder (e.g. local authority) records, fully integrated with existing systems
• Configurable management of the professional teaching standards as a hierarchy, with supporting information
• Collection of evidence of learning against the teaching standards as Continual Professional Development records (CPD)
• Teacher’s Self-Service portal - branded and tailored portal that is seamlessly integrated with the GTCS website
• Secure teacher login
• Self-service update of details, including employment history
• Access to information on the standards, as defined in Subscribe 360. This allows teachers to set areas for professional development
• Ability to record CPD records and supporting evidence of learning, against the standards
• Tools to allow teachers to view and explore their progress against the standards. This includes heat map tools that assist teachers in identifying areas that they may wish to develop further
• Tools that allow teachers to share records with their line manager as part of a staff review process and if desired with third parties
• Share your learning with your line manager as part of the staff review process
• A tailored calendar and timeline to help teachers plan professional learning
• Online knowledge base

The Subscribe360 solution is deployed on Dynamics 365 in the Microsoft public cloud. This allows GTCS to make use of other Microsoft cloud-based tools such as Office 365 with SharePoint Online for document management and Power BI for in-depth, interactive analysis of data.

“GTCS has three core pillars to our organisation: Registration, Regulation and the Support of Professional Learning. Dynamics CRM and specifically the Subscribe360 solution from C2, has supported GTCS in its modernisation programme by providing a national system that supports our registrants, the local authorities that employ them, and the ability for GTCS to carry out its function for Professional Learning. As a result of implementing Subscribe360, we have added real value to its users providing the tools required to help support the professional learning process which in turn will continue to improve the standards of teaching in Scotland.”

                - Thomas Madden, Senior Manager: Digital Services, GTCS

IMPACT

The initial aim of the project is to help teachers plan their learning, ensuring it is as targeted as possible. This saves significant teaching and reviewer time across a large number of teaching professionals. Longer term, it will assist in ensuring the capability of teachers across Scotland. From a GTCS perspective, it facilitates a centralised roll-out of a self-service, standards-based approach. The ongoing professional development of teachers can be measured, analysed and evaluated, which would not be possible without similar technology.

NEXT STEPS

The next steps include a national rollout of the MyPL program and the deployment of Subscribe360 to support other GTCS initiatives. This includes the “Fitness to Teach” initiative, which will use the Case management elements of Subscribe360 and Dynamics 365.