Schools will be expected to smarten up their appearance under a Tory government. Out will go jeans and trainers, untucked baggy shirts, crop tops and biker leathers.

This time, however, it is not the pupils who will be under the spotlight, it is the teachers.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools minister, today said that the Conservatives would give full backing to schools that introduced smart dress codes for staff in order to boost their standing among pupils, parents and the wider community.

“I’m keen to support those head teachers who are doing everything to enhance the professional standing of their staff,” he said today.

Mr Gove said he had been particularly impressed by Devon Hanson, head teacher of the new Walworth Academy school in South London, who had asked his staff not to wear denim or leather.

While stressing that it was not for politicians to dictate what teachers wear, Mr Gove said that smartly dressed teachers gave the whole school a more professional atmosphere.

They also commanded more respect among pupils and were greatly admired by parents, who believed they set a good example to their children.

“One of the great benefits of the Academies programme has been that schools are increasingly listening to parents. In some of the best schools, like the Mossbourne Community Academy or the new Walworth Academy, head teachers are responding to parental wishes by having a strict uniform code for pupils and ensuring that staff dress professionally,” he said.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, principal of Mossbourne Community Academy, in Hackney, North East London, agreed that smartly dressed teachers could lift the atmosphere of the whole school.

“Of course teachers should dress professionally especially where you enforce a rigorous school uniform policy. Pupils have a right to expect their teachers to dress as smartly as they do. At Mossbourne Academy we are not prescriptive, but teachers exercise common sense and the convention is suits or formal dress,” he said.

A source at the Ark education charity, which sponsors a number of academies, including the Walworth Academy, said that it was made perfectly clear to teachers when they joined that they would expect to dress formally.

"The unwritten rule is no denim, no leather and no studs," he said.

But Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union was outraged at the suggestion of a dress code for teachers.

“This is a party that said it wants to allow teachers more independence to use their professional judgement and it is making suggestions on the way they dress,” she said.

She added that schools had run into problems in the past when they attempted to ban women teachers from wearing trousers or insist that men must wear ties. Teaching was an active job and a formal business suit was sometimes too restrictive.

“If this is a sign of things to come, 400,000 teachers will be alienated,” she said.

But Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, accepted that parents expected teachers to be well-presented as this projected an air of professionalism and authority.

Mr Gove may well claim to represent the views of many parents who are fed up with the scruffy appearance of their children’s teachers. But he may well regret his suggestion that teachers smarten up.

Not so long ago, writing in this very paper, he admitted that one of the reasons he gravitated towards politics was “a desire to find an environment in which my appalling dress sense and near total lack of style would matter less”.

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