Following our letter to Directors of Education sent in August 2025 regarding Fitness to Teach scheduling issues, we are reaching out again to our key contacts in local authorities to make you aware that we are currently recruiting new Fitness to Teach panel members. We are asking for your support to share this as widely as possible across your schools and other relevant key areas, and to reassure any applicants that their release time will be facilitated.

To provide further context, we thought you may find the following information useful:

• Our panel pool is currently comprised of 41 members: 14 lay members and 27 registered teachers. There are 5 conveners.
• Each hearing requires a panel of 3, comprised of 2 registrants and 1 lay person. Each panel must have a convener.
• 16 Local Authorities currently have no member representation on our panels. Of the 16 who do, 3 are represented by 2 pool members, and the rest by 1. There are 3 of our panel members are employed in a primary school, 13 in a secondary school and 3 in other Local Authority roles outwith a school setting.
• In 2026, we currently anticipate scheduling full hearings requiring a combined total of more than 200 hearing days.

What you can do

Please support us by being proactive in encouraging your registered and lay employees to consider applying to be a panel member. We need people who have good levels of availability and we need employers to commit to allowing panel members to attend hearings. If all panel members were able to commit to attending one 5-day hearing per year, the impact on our scheduling would be immense.

You may also identify personnel holding key roles within your authority who could support us in raising awareness of the recruitment round, particularly with those registrants who have greater availability. For example, those who manage the supply teacher list or individual headteachers. We would welcome any conversations with any interested stakeholders. Please share this email with those colleagues, or ask them to contact me directly on governance@gtcs.org.uk

You can find the advert and further information about the role on our website: Vacancies