Three more teachers face classroom bans

Published on Saturday 6 December 2008 18:41

THREE Scots teachers are set to be banned from classrooms after they were sacked for professional incompetence, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Just a week after Susan Barnard became the first Scottish teacher ever to be struck off the register for incompetence, the new cases are due to go before disciplinary hearings at the end of January.

Last night, the chief executive of the General Teaching Council Scotland (GTCS), the body which has the power to strike teachers off the register, said his organisation would not shirk from using the ultimate sanction.

The teachers involved have been sacked for incompetence by the councils that employed them in the past 18 months and then referred to the GTCS.

Barnard admitted incompetence after working at Coupar Angus and Comrie primary schools, both in Perthshire, between 2004 and 2006.

The hearing heard that members of staff and parents repeatedly commented on Barnard's inability to communicate. She often adopted an insincere and sarcastic tone, and made simple subjects unnecessarily complex. Other complaints included dancing on the tables during a music lesson and pulling faces at children while they were being reprimanded by senior staff.

The cases of three more allegedly incompetent teachers are expected to come before the GTCS in late January next year.

Scotland on Sunday asked all of Scotland's 32 councils for details of teachers sacked for incompetence. One teacher facing disciplinary proceedings was sacked in August 2007 and reported to the GTCS by Clackmannanshire Council. Another was dismissed by Fife Council officials earlier in 2008. Twenty-six councils said they had none. Dundee, Shetland and Western Isles failed to respond and East Lothian insisted we use Freedom of Information laws.

Anthony Finn, chief executive of the GTCS, said: "We expect to see some more cases of incompetence. In years to come there may be others.

"But we have 83,000 teachers on our register, so this is a very small number."

Finn said the body would not shirk from the responsibility of dealing with inadequate teachers. But he added that he sympathised with Barnard.

He said: "These individuals are human beings who might not be good teachers but they still have their dignity and respect."

Ronnie Smith, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, the country's biggest teaching union, denied there was a problem with incompetence in the classroom despite the spate of cases.

He said: "I think it's right that if somebody doesn't meet the standard they should be disciplined. Teachers don't want people working alongside them who aren't able to do the job to the standard required."

But Judith Gillespie, of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, emphasised the need for incompetence hearings to become more commonplace.

She said: "There is a small percentage of people, 1% or 2% of the teaching population, who are the problem.

"We need to look at the whole process to make incompetence dismissals much more routine, so that people are not turned into quasi-criminals because they are incompetent."

Conservative education spokeswoman Liz Smith said: "I am very pleased to see the GTCS weeding out incompetence in the profession, because we owe it to our parents and pupils."

Ken Macintosh, Labour spokesman for education, said: "I'm confident this is not the pattern of things to come, but we certainly want to keep an eye on this and if we see numbers continue at this level we would be concerned."