Forth Valley College are part of a trio of Scotland’s largest colleges, agreeing to take part in a lecturer registration pilot led by the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC Scotland).
Dundee and Angus College and Glasgow Kelvin College, make up the group and the colleges were carefully chosen to capture the breadth of lecturer expertise in Scotland’s colleges, which will assist GTC Scotland in establishing registration across the sector. Plans to engage other colleges will be developed based on the lessons learned from the pilot.
The pilot registration project will begin registering lecturers from the three colleges who hold a Teaching Qualification in Further Education (TQFE) or a recognised Primary or Secondary teaching qualification with service in Further Education, in November.
During the pilot, the colleges and participating lecturers will work closely with GTC Scotland to test, trial and feedback on systems and processes for lecturer registration. The work undertaken in the pilot will help ensure that GTC Scotland’s systems and processes are optimised for the roll out of registration across the college sector.
The pilot is a key milestone in the work being undertaken by the cross-sector College Lecturer Registration Working Group (CLRWG) which was tasked with establishing requirements and pathways for mandatory registration of college lecturers in Scotland. The stakeholders in the group – GTC Scotland, EIS-FELA, Colleges Scotland, the Scottish Government and universities offering the TQFE – are committed to ensuring that all lecturers in Scotland’s colleges will be registered with GTC Scotland.
Ken Muir, Chief Executive and Registrar of GTC Scotland and Chair of the CLRWG, said: “The launch of this pilot is a vitally important step forward in the college registration project. We look forward to working with the colleges and the lecturers who will be registering with us, to develop a clear and robust system of registration for college lecturers, which we can then roll out across the college sector.
“The college registration project seeks to ensure that the distinct identity of college lecturers is respected and that the profile of college lecturer professionalism is raised and more widely appreciated across Scotland.”
Kenny MacInnes, Vice Principal for Student Experience at Forth Valley College, said: “We are delighted to be involved in this sector wide pilot in order to support the successful roll-out of the registration project across the country. Registration will further enhance the profile of lecturers and give formal recognition of their expertise and high professional standards.”
Larry Flanagan, General Secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), said: “EIS-FELA welcomes the launch of the pilot registration project. Registration of college lecturers has been a long-standing policy of EIS-FELA. We believe that college lecturers deserve the professional recognition which registration brings and the acknowledgement that teaching in a college requires a body of knowledge and the development of skills and experience to deliver vocational and academic qualifications to a wide range of learners.
“We will work with GTC Scotland and the colleges involved to support our members as they engage with the registration process. Their feedback will be key to ensuring that the registration model, being developed, is bespoke to the college sector, meeting lecturers’ needs and embedding career-long learning and development opportunities."
Shona Struthers, Chief Executive of Colleges Scotland, said: “Colleges Scotland recognises that the start of this registration pilot is a welcome step towards the implementation of an important sector-wide process. We are confident that this pilot will help inform and develop the registration model which can then be rolled-out on a national basis, and we will work closely with GTC Scotland and EIS-FELA to help successfully implement the project.”
Simon Hewitt, Principal at Dundee and Angus College, said: “D&A are very much looking forward to working with GTC Scotland on this pilot and getting the substantial work of lecturer registration well underway in the sector. Much work has gone on ‘behind the scenes’ to get to this point and we look forward to taking the next steps in partnership with GTC Scotland and EIS-FELA colleagues. This key milestone takes us closer to the registration model our lecturers will benefit from so it’s great to be supporting the process.”
Robin Ashton, Vice Principal - Curriculum & Quality Enhancement at Glasgow Kelvin College, said; "Glasgow Kelvin is delighted to have been invited to be part of the GTC Scotland pilot project. This brings a range of benefits to our lecturing staff in terms of professional recognition and the expansion of good practice. We look forward to the continued development of the partnership and the learning opportunities it will provide for staff."
Find out more about the lecturer registration project: www.gtcs.org.uk/college.aspx