Secondary Teaching Flexible Route - Teaching Experience Requirement Question

Hello,

I am a registered teacher in the USA with a Master's Degree in Secondary Education, plus I have two years of full-time secondary teaching experience at the middle school level. I received provisional registration from GTCS but need to complete 149 days of additional teaching because my current post is 10-11 year olds (6th graders), so it technically doesn't qualify for secondary. I arranged a grade switch in my current school to teach 12-13 years old so that I could quickly meet this requirement in a year (and thus receive full registration).

However, when I emailed GTCS just to clarify that this would be enough, I was recently advised that a portion of this 149 days must be completed at the Senior Phase (high school diploma in the US or highers in Scotland). In other words, I have to teach high school for at least 75 days in order to qualify. You can imagine why this is problematic. I'm shocked at this parameter because I hadn't seen it in any of the literature/websites as I researched and pursued registration through the GTCS.

Is there anyone who can provide me with some insight/tips on the flexible route...and if they were told something similar? Where was this parameter ever communicated?

 

Their website is difficult to navigate, and they won't believe you if you try to give them some friendly "user feedback", so you'll just have to take their word for it that it's there, and "obvious".

In your situation, I'd speak to your current supervisor (the person signing off on your GTCS form), explain the situation and see if you can come to an arrangement where they'll sign off for you to make the GTCS happy.

Sounds dodgy, but their requirements don't always reflect reality, and their stubbornness knows no bounds. I have taught a range of Secondary subjects aside from those in which I am qualified (in some parts of the world this is standard expectation of a qualified teacher). I've also taught in Primary and Early Years. In my experience there's not much difference between them. The skills are transferrable, and a half-decent professional should be capable of swotting up on content. It'd be great if the GTCS assessed one thing: whether you're a capable teacher or not, instead of getting caught up in this nit-picking and insisting recent, highly commended experience matches specific content taught in degrees completed decades ago. It discourages decent professionals from bothering, and the teaching salaries in Scotland aren't that great anyway!

But hey ho, they are the gatekeepers to teaching in Scotland, so if you want to teach there you have no choice but to ask how high they want you to jump. Talk to your supervisor about the form!

 

Thank you for your response! My current supervisor is my principal in the United States so I'm afraid her opinion won't hold much clout for the GTCS. Is that what you were suggesting? It's too bad I work in a middle school and there aren't higher grades so she could sign off that I had taught those grades.