How to review your staff code of conduct

What this policy needs to do

Your staff code of conduct should clearly set out the standards of conduct that you expect staff to follow. This includes inside and outside of the school.

Governing boards of maintained schools must establish procedures for the regulation of staff conduct, under regulation 7 of the School Staffing (England) Regulations 2009.

Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), which is statutory guidance for all schools, says that schools should have a staff code of conduct or behaviour policy.

It should, among other things, include information on:

• Low-level concerns
• Allegations against staff
• Whistle-blowing
• Acceptable use of technologies (including the use of mobile devices)
• Staff/pupil relationships
• Communications, including the use of social media

This is explained in paragraph 99 of KCSIE.

3 key questions to challenge the policy

1. How does this policy meet the requirements of KCSIE?

You'll want to make sure that leaders have considered all elements of the policy mentioned in KCSIE, including:

• Low-level concerns. Previously these might have been covered in your child protection and safeguarding policy under allegations of abuse against staff, and signposted to in your staff code of conduct. Your school leaders should now cover low-level concerns in the staff code of conduct too)
• Allegations against staff, which would be 'allegations that may meet the harm threshold' (the other type of allegations in KCSIE are 'low-level concerns')
• Whistle-blowing. You may already have a separate policy (it's only statutory for academies, including free schools but it's good practice for all schools). However, your staff code of conduct should also include details of your whistle-blowing procedure

Your school might also have updated the code of conduct in response to any incidents you’ve had in the school.

2. Is this policy being followed, and properly implemented? How do you know?

Your headteacher should be able to reassure you of this. For example, they might explain:

• That new staff sign up to the code when they join and existing staff are reminded of it each year
• How cases of misconduct have been successfully handled and what they’ve learnt from this

3. How is the policy tailored to our school?

Ideally you want your school's code of conduct to reflect the school’s policies, ethos and what you expect from staff. Ask your school leaders for evidence of this.

For example:

• If you’re a faith school you might reflect this in the policy’s aims
• Information about how you expect staff to use the internet on the school site and their use of mobile devices should be specific to your school

Further questions

We also have guidance on general questions you could ask when reviewing all policies.

Model code of conduct

These model documents, from our sister service The Key Leaders, are not meant as a guide for writing your own, as that's your school leaders' job. Use them to give you a sense of what a good policy looks like. 

For individual schools: Model policy: staff code of conduct for individual schools

For multi-academy trusts: Model policy: staff code of conduct for multi-academy trusts (MATs)

Our policy has been approved by Forbes Solicitors and was developed in consultation with the school leaders' union NAHT.

For more policy support, see our Policy Bank.

Examples from schools 

Primary

• Moulton Primary School, a foundation school in West Northamptonshire

Secondary

• Balshaw’s Church of England High School, a maintained school in Lancashire
• St Aidan's Church of England High School, an academy in North Yorkshire

Special

• Five Acre Wood School in Kent