GTC Scotland has published the results of the annual evaluation of the teacher reaccreditation process, Professional Update (PU).
Teachers confirm their engagement with the PU process every 5 years. This report evaluates the experiences of the cohort of fully registered teachers and non-registered managers who took part in the PU confirmation process for the 2023 to 2024 session. We issued the survey in November 2024.
Key statistics:
- 85% of reviewees used the Standard for Career-Long Professional Learning to prepare for their professional review and development (PRD) meeting.
- Almost a fifth of reviewees (18%) said they did not have time to fully engage with the Professional Standards when self-evaluating and planning their professional learning.
- 84% of reviewees found that their PRD meeting had the correct balance of support and challenge.
- 24% of reviewees felt that their PRD meeting was not very useful at all and gave a variety of reasons.
- 75% of direct submission respondents indicated that they did not have a PRD meeting.
- Over 80% of reviewees who used MyGTCS found that the system met their needs, although those who encountered difficulties cited issues with unreliability and fear of losing data.
Using the Professional Standards
Elaine Napier, GTC Scotland’s Head of Education and Standards, said: “We collect insights from the teaching profession and use these to inform our work. Our ongoing annual survey of participants in the Professional Update process forms part of this work.
“It was encouraging to see that a high percentage of the teachers who responded used the Standard for Career-Long Professional Learning to support their self-evaluation but also concerning that almost a fifth of reviewees said that they did not have time to fully engage with the Professional Standards. We are calling for better structures to give teachers the time to learn and reflect as part of our manifesto priorities for the Scottish Parliament elections.”
How we issued the surveys
We issued surveys to ‘reviewees’ (teachers who had completed PU as part of a validated system), ‘reviewers’ (those who had confirmed the completion of a colleague’s PU) and to teachers who had followed the direct submission process to complete PU. Read about the direct submission process.
We received survey responses from:
- 818 reviewees
- 175 reviewers
- 23 teachers who had completed PU via the direct submission process.
We will be sending out surveys to those involved in the PU process in 2024 to 2025 later this year.
What is Professional Update?
Our governing legislation placed a duty upon us to introduce a reaccreditation scheme, requiring us to set out measures to ensure that we are kept informed about the standards of education and training of teachers on our Register. To meet that duty, we introduced Professional Update (PU) in 2014.
PU is an ongoing process that includes engagement in professional learning, self-evaluation against the Professional Standards, maintaining a reflective professional learning record and professional dialogue with a line manager acting as reviewer.
Every 5 years, teachers are required to confirm their engagement with the process. They can then either have this endorsed by their line manager or directly submit their learning record and confirmation to GTC Scotland, depending on employment context.
PU should involve a supportive and rigorous PRD process, where teachers engage in regular professional dialogue with their line manager.
Teachers engage in professional learning to stimulate their thinking and professional knowledge, enhance their expertise, and ensure that their practice is critically informed and up to date.
A majority of fully registered teachers use MyGTCS to record their professional learning. We are launching a new MyGTCS platform to all teachers from early 2026: Read more about the new MyGTCS.
Read the report
Read the Professional Update 2023 to 2024 evaluation report.
