What is the Appropriate Body?

Northamptonshire Teaching School Hub is approved by the DfE to deliver the professional Appropriate Body service to support the induction of early Career Teachers (ECTs)

Appropriate bodies support the schools and teachers they work with in a variety of ways and their core functions are central to ensuring that schools provide adequate support to teachers at the start of their teaching career.

Appropriate bodies have two key roles which will be described in this guidance:

• Monitoring of support – appropriate bodies will

  • check that early career teachers are receiving their statutory entitlements, and that regard is had to the statutory guidance.
  • provide ECF fidelity checks, ensuring schools are supported to provide ECTs with an ECF-based induction. This aspect of the monitoring of support role is explained in more detail in Chapter 4.

• Monitoring of assessment 

• appropriate bodies will make the final decision as to whether the ECT has satisfactorily met the Teachers’ Standards5, based on the headteacher’s recommendation.