Standard for Full Registration leaflet

About this publication

The Standard for Full Registration Leaflet provides information on the range of attributes that are expected of all teachers under the following categories:

• Professional knowledge and understanding 
• Professional skills and abilities
• Professional values and personal commitment.

Standard for Full Registration

The The Standard for Full Registration (SFR) serves three main purposes for Scottish teachers.  It provides:

• a clear and concise description of professional qualities and capabilities teachers are expected to develop in the course of induction
• a professional standard against which reliable and consistent decisions can be made on the fitness of new teachers for full registration with GTC Scotland
• a baseline professional standard which will apply to all teachers throughout their careers

While the first two purposes relate to new teachers, it is the third one – a baseline professional standard which will apply to all teachers throughout their careers – which makes the SFR significant to all Scottish teachers.

Three categories of SFR

The SFR uses three categories to elaborate the range of attributes expected of teachers:

• Professional knowledge and understanding
• Professional skills and abilities
• Professional values and personal commitment

There is clear commitment within the SFR that, after gaining Full Registration, teachers will then maintain that Standard throughout their careers.  They will show commitment to lifelong learning, personal development and enquiry as these are at the heart of what it means to be a learning professional.

In line with the professional review and development model, all teachers will have professional reflection and self-evaluation at the heat of their working lives – and it is against the SFR that they should be reflecting, evaluating and measuring themselves.  That is the principal reason why the SFR is of significance to every teacher in the land.

However, the SFR is not just a simple list of competences which can be ticked. It is a more subtle document than that.

The professional knowledge and understanding fully registered teachers bring to their teaching is not static and must allow them to develop as education, including the curriculum, develops.

The professional skills and abilities teachers have also develop as they reflect critically on their current practices and improve their teaching, and their pupils’ learning.

But underpinning both these areas are the professional values and personal commitment fully registered teachers display throughout their careers.  Teachers take responsibility for their professional learning and development because that is a key factor in being part of a profession.

The SFR is multi-faceted so it would be unreasonable to expect teachers to measure themselves against if fully each year.  But over the course of a five-year period, it would be quite possible and perfectly reasonable for teachers to consider each element of the Standard and set their own professional performance beside it.

Direct weblinks

• The Standard for Full Registration
• Probation
• Registration