Professional Standards and Fitness to Practise in teaching:

issues for students and staff

Elisabet Weedon Centre for Research in Education

Inclusion and DiversityUniversity of Edinburgh

Focus on:

• DRC investigation into Fitness to Practise

• Students’ experiences in relation to ‘fitness to practise’: at university and on placement

• The views of academic staff

• The views (as reported by the students) of staff in placement schools

Disability, fitness to practise and disclosure of disability

• DRC – formal investigation into fitness to practise standards (autumn 2007)

• Medicine and social work professional bodies operate fitness standards; teaching in England (medical) does but not in Scotland

• Disclosure discrepancies: 3% of education students in Scotland disclose disability; but there are only around 1% of disabled teachers in the workforce

Case studies: 4 students

Jean: dyslexia

Andrew: cerebral palsy

Both successfully completed and started probation

Dionne: Hidden impairment (Crohn’s disease

Lesley: Multiple impairments: hearing and mobility

Have not yet completed

Reasonable adjustments at university

• DSA which provided computer and IT support for all but Dionne

• Extra time in exams

• In principle they could ask for extensions to coursework but did not use it

• Dionne found departmental staff helpful and supportive

Work placement: main issues

• Disclosure and (lack of) guidance on disclosure (Jean)

• Attitude of school/individual teachers to disability (Jean and Andrew)

• Support and understanding of physical access (Lesley)

• None for Dionne – individual teacher accommodated to her requirements

Work placement: Lesley

The council unfortunately does not make a distinction between an actually level school and one that has a lift. So they had me down as being in a level school but when I went there I was in an upstairs classroom and I was responsible for taking the children up and down the stairs … I couldn’t do that … They said they would cover … they never turned up

Work placement: Dionne

When I’ve been poorly, I’ve just got in touch with uni and they’ve sorted it …that’s really my only lifeline and … the teacher I just worked with, we’re really good friends now … so, she knows about it, and we sort of sort things out around… so if I went in one day, and I wasn’t feeling very well, she’d be like: ‘well how about, I teach first thing, you can get yourself up and sort of get ready’. So she was pretty accommodating

Fitness to practise? Typical academic perspective - unease

But I am not sure what they would do about anybody that was deaf or … in a wheelchair, would they be able to manage a class … I suppose there are obviously things like epileptics can’t become teachers … AND

I find it hard to see how people with severe dyslexia could be teachers … (Academic Inst. D)

Fitness to practise? Untypical academic perspective

I think there is a real issue because there is a public conception of what a teacher is. It is not somebody in a wheelchair and it is not somebody with a visual impairment and it is not somebody who can’t hear … [the public perception is] our teachers should be clever, our teachers should be able to spell … (Academic Inst. A)

Impact of legislation (driven by disability as a political category)

• Universities responded by taking positive action BUT

• Staff within universities do not necessarily accept this interpretation – or lack awareness and understanding of the impact of different impairments

Disclosure: to disclose or not …

• Hidden impairments present particular problem for students

• Students generally do not want to be classed as disabled – but have to in order to gain reasonable adjustments

• Setting impacts on disclosure: There are approx 3% of students on ITA courses that have disclosed a disability; only approx 1% of teachers disclose a disability …

To summarise:

The notion of ‘fitness to practise’ has been discarded as anachronistic and discriminatory; however, it clearly continues to exist in people’s minds, reinforcing the idea of disability as individual deficit and the disabled individual as unworthy of full social inclusion