1. Benchmark
To present the argument for investment you need to build a strong case backed by good evidence. Comparing to previous years’ expenditure won’t be enough, though. The Teacher Development Trust (TDT) offers a free benchmarking tool at TDTrust.org/benchmarking, which can tell you what the average school spends on CPD, as well as what the top 20% of schools are spending.
2. Identify grant opportunities
The Education Support Partnership has recently partnered with the CSIS Charity to launch a Training and Development Fund, to which teachers can apply for course funding, including career development and classroom training courses – find out more via tinyurl.com/ESP-CSIS.
Elsewhere, STEM Learning has teamed up with the Wellcome Trust to offer ‘Enthuse Award’ bursaries for schools to help pay for STEM-related CPD for teachers, technicians and ITT students. Further details can be found at stem.org.uk/bursaries. Finally, the DfE has launched a Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund for CPD provision – see tinyurl.com/DfE-CPDfund for more information.
3. Improve your in-house processes
Schools should foster a culture where staff are willing to put effort into their own learning, possess the capacity and capability to work on problems and can access high quality support and challenge.
This can be difficult and hard to measure, however. A CPD audit will reveal what’s currently working and what isn’t, and offer steps for improvement. The TDT can provide a CPD audit that includes self-review from school leaders and an all-staff survey; similar services are also available from CUREE (curee.co.uk) and the UCL Institute of Education.
4. Go subject-specific
Effective teacher learning needs to disrupt existing thinking, while providing new perspectives on what’s possible and how to achieve it. The best professional development helps teachers understand how to improve the teaching of particular subjects and topics.
Translating generic ideas into practical steps takes time, however – e.g. ‘How can I use this advice on differentiation and apply it effectively to this lesson on triangles?’ A helpful step would be to encourage your staff to join subject associations and networks – you’ll find a good list of these at tinyurl.com/CSA-members.
5. Use your time well
Teacher learning is time consuming, challenging and tiring, and it’s unreasonable to assume that teachers can do it in addition to everything else. Instead, try to free up your teachers’ time by cutting back on meetings and clamping down on the volume of internal email. Reduce the amount of expected marking and focus instead on verbal feedback.
Then set aside time for subjectfocused meetings, in which teachers can collectively plan, analyse data, assess and have structured conversations about the best ways to teach particular students and topics.
David Weston is CEO of the Teacher Development Trust
