Reporting of open meetings of the General Teaching Council needs to recognise that some items are about work in progress and early drafts. By their very nature, codes of conduct such as the one referred to in your article (TES, January 30) are simple, and seemingly statements of the obvious in order to help the public understand what they should expect - in this case from a registered teacher.
All professional bodies produce codes, not with the aim of being ground-breaking or novel but to set out publicly and with clarity the standards expected of and followed by the profession.
Some school inspectors might also feel “insulted” by statements of the equally “blindingly obvious” in the Office for Standards in Education’s code; for example “report honestly and fairly, ensuring that judgments are accurate and reliable”. But they don’t, because they understand the desirability of a simple statement of minimal standards for themselves and the wider public. Teachers deserve no less.
Our open meetings and wide-ranging work programme arguably deserve coverage which, in our case, includes successful projects involving significant numbers of teachers.
Carol Adams Chief executive General Teaching Council for England 344-354 Gray’s Inn Road London WC1
