GTC Scotland marks 60th anniversary of its creation and looks to the future with manifesto themes

June

2025

Founded on 2 June 1965, The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC Scotland), is marking 60 years as the regulator for teachers in Scotland. The anniversary of the Teaching Council (Scotland) Act receiving Royal assent has prompted GTC Scotland to look ahead to the next Scottish elections and the coordinated action needed to ensure trusted teaching thrives.

Manifesto priority themes

Throughout Scotland’s current education reform process, as MSPs debate the Education (Scotland) Bill, GTC Scotland has been advocating for ensuring trusted teaching as a critical part of the future vision for Scottish education.

GTC Scotland has set out 5 key manifesto priority themes:

· Theme 1: Understanding and valuing teaching

· Theme 2: A refreshed teacher education and development framework

· Theme 3: Supporting structures for teacher development

· Theme 4: Teacher supply, recruitment, retention and promotion

· Theme 5: Working together to create a coherent system of regulation

For more detail of what we’re calling for, read GTC Scotland’s manifesto priorities.

Dr Pauline Stephen said: “We are taking our 5 key manifesto themes to political parties as a call to action for politicians who want to respond to the challenges facing education today by ensuring that high teaching standards continue to be championed and supported.

“While a strong framework for trusted teaching has been built, challenges remain. Now, just as in 1961, we must continue to stand up for the profession and keep standards high.”

The history of GTC Scotland

Watch Dr Pauline Stephen, Chief Executive and Registrar, as she discusses the history and future of trusted teaching in Scotland.

GTC Scotland was the first regulator for teachers in the world and was established following demands from teachers for rules and requirements about who could be a teacher. On 8 May 1961, over 1,000 striking teachers packed into the Central Halls on Bath Street in Glasgow to discuss the need for a body to ensure teaching standards and give teaching the professional status and standing afforded to regulated professions like doctors, nurses, midwives and solicitors.

These qualified teachers were concerned by the number of unqualified people being placed in classrooms across Scotland. The baby boom of the 1940s, and an increase in the school leaving age to 15, had caused a shortage of teachers.

In 1968, registration with GTC Scotland, based on appropriate qualification, became compulsory for all permanent teachers in a state school. Since gaining full independence from government in 2012 under The Public Services Reform (General Teaching Council for Scotland) Order 2011, GTC Scotland’s register has expanded. Teachers in independent schools joined the register from 2017, and college lecturers followed in 2018 under new national terms and conditions.

There are now more than 80,000 individual registrants on GTC Scotland’s register.

The purpose of GTC Scotland

GTC Scotland works in the public interest to enhance trust in teachers by setting, upholding and promoting high standards.

It does so by:

· setting standards for entry to the profession

· assessing teacher education programmes

· keeping a register of qualified teachers

· addressing any serious concerns about teachers that might arise.

Dr Pauline Stephen said: “It is as important now as it was in 1961 that we honour our conception of teaching and what it means to be a teacher in Scotland. To stand up for teaching as complex, relational and intellectual work where teachers work in relationships of authority and trust. It is a profession rooted in highly specialist knowledge and skills, where standards, ethics and values are core to what it means to be a teacher.”

Read a commemorative final edition of GTC Scotland’s magazine, Teaching Scotland

Read Dr Pauline Stephen’s blogpost, Trusted Teaching at 60

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