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