Other uses of the Code

published:30 Sep 2009

Apart from regulation, how can the Code be used?

This is where the positive wording of the Code is especially valuable.

For trainee teachers, the Code sets out the ‘territory’ of the profession they are joining – useful both for those who have come direct from student life, with experience as a learner not a teacher, and the increasing number who come with career experience, often indeed with experience of membership of a professional body with its own code. We’re working with teacher training institutions in this regard, and the Code’s principles figure highly in the advocacy talks we hold with many thousands of trainee teachers each year.

Similarly, the Code can play a valuable part in the induction of new staff in schools, including but not limited to newly-qualified teachers (NQTs), and governors too. The code can also play a useful part when a school re-examines its values or ethos, and in establishing the place of teaching within a multi-disciplinary framework, increasingly important as the ‘Every Child Matters’ approach becomes embedded.

And this Code help re-cast, unequivocally for the better, the understanding that the public in general, and parents in particular, have of teachers and the work they do.