Best Practice

Case study: A personal and extensive CPD programme

CPD Early Career Teachers
A personalised and extensive programme of CPD at Uppingham Community College aims to developing teaching staff to be the best they can be. Clare Duffy sets out the thinking behind the various elements of their Teacher Development Programme
Image: Adobe Stock

We know that staff who feel valued and supported in school perform well. Indeed, research finds that “teachers who work in supportive contexts stay in the classroom longer, and improve at faster rates, than their peers in less-supportive contexts” (Papay & Kraft, 2015).

Given the current teacher shortages and the challenges of recruitment, encouraging good teachers to stay in the profession is an on-going challenge for school leaders.

To help address this at my school, Uppingham Community College, an 11 to 16 secondary school in Rutland, we have strived to create the conditions where everyone can thrive, offering professional development which is accessible to all but also tailored to the needs of the individual.

We call this our Teacher Development Programme. It features a variety of pathways available to each teacher based on their career stage, along with other training throughout the school year.

Our ethos towards CPD can be summarised succinctly in the words of Professor Dylan Wiliam: “If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve.” (Wiliam, 2012)

Our pathways enable all of our teachers to focus on professional development which is relevant to them. This is supported by our high-trust coaching culture within school which encourages colleagues to continually reflect on and refine their teaching practice, believing that each and every one of us can become incrementally better through collaboration and deliberate practice. I have written about our approach to coaching and improving pedagogical practice in another article for SecEd which you can find here.

Through our approach we are addressing many of the six measures Papay and Kraft (2015) found to be characteristic of supportive school environments:

  1. Consistent order and discipline.
  2. Opportunities for peer collaboration.
  3. Supportive principled leadership.
  4. Effective professional development.
  5. A school culture characterised by trust.
  6. A fair teacher evaluation process providing meaningful feedback.

 

Supportive performance management

In a bid to create fair teacher evaluations, one of the earliest changes we introduced as part of our Teacher Development Programme was to the format of our appraisal system.

Drawing on research which suggests that “increasing teachers’ autonomy over their professional development goals has the greatest potential for increasing teacher job satisfaction and retention” (Worth & Van den Brande, 2020), we established Personal Improvement Planning (PIPs).

This PIP process allows teachers to choose three objectives to work on during the year. One is aligned with a whole-school teaching and learning priority linked to our ethos of everyone becoming incrementally better classroom practitioners.

The other two objectives are decided by the individual – one is related to their area of responsibility within school (either contributing to their department or an element of leadership) and the other is based on an area of personal interest or career aspiration.

A coaching conversation takes place between the individual and their line manager to review the previous year’s achievements and set new goals. All of this information is collated in a document which captures each individual’s objectives as well as career aspirations. This allows me to place staff on professional development pathways and direct relevant CPD opportunities to colleagues as they become available.

One other key change we made to our appraisal system was the removal of formal lesson observations tied to performance management. Reading the research of Professor Robert Coe into classroom observation was enlightening – he found that lesson judgements were significantly unreliable, claiming that “if a lesson is judged ‘outstanding’ by one observer, the probability that a second observer would give a different judgement is between 51% and 78%” (Coe, 2014 – see a SecEd report on the research here).

This move had the single biggest impact on our approach to CPD, helping to nurture a high-trust supportive culture where staff feel confident to trial new techniques, regularly dropping into colleagues’ lessons for learning walks and to inform coaching conversations.

 

Personalised pathways

Our Teacher Development Programme has three main pathways within it, covering seven different career stages. The aim of the programme is to ultimately create a highly effective workforce which delivers great teaching to our students, while also meeting the needs of each individual’s professional goals.

 

1, Early career pathway

This pathway is for teachers in the early stages of their career. This includes:

  • Trainee teachers with provision for PGCE students, school-centred initial teacher training and apprenticeships, including mentoring and a buddy system within school.
  • Early career teachers (ECTs) with an in-school mentor and extra support in addition to the Early Career Framework as required.
  • Recently qualified teachers (RQTs) with two to five years’ experience who are offered tailored sessions based on need, e.g. time management, behaviour for learning etc.

 

2, Expert teacher pathway

For staff who wish to develop their classroom practice, we offer a route which values an individual’s role in improving teaching and learning across the school through further training and research. This provision includes:

  • Lead practitioners: We have a team of lead practitioners with representation from most departments. These colleagues are supported in achieving the SSAT Lead Practitioner accreditation and are then involved in modelling and leading improvements in teaching practice.
  • Subject-specific training allowing individuals to develop their subject knowledge.
  • Completion of one of the National Professional Qualifications (almost 20% of our teachers are enrolled on one of these).
  • Taking on the role of a training lead within school (e.g. leading on literacy or diversity).
  • Coaching colleagues.

 

3, Leadership pathway

For teachers who want to pursue a leadership pathway we offer training provision tailored for each step of their leadership journey. This includes:

  • Aspirant leaders who work with an in-school coach to complete learning based on their identified need with the option of working on a department or whole school improvement project.
  • Middle leaders who are given the opportunity to work with a coach to discuss their leadership practice, building their confidence in specific contexts. They are able to access the SSAT Middle Leadership qualification as well as the suite of National Professional Qualifications (Teacher Development, Leading Teaching, Behaviour, and Culture or Literacy).
  • Senior leaders can access the NPQs (Senior Leadership, Headship or Executive Leadership) as well as the SSAT Aspirant Headteacher programme.

 

Whole-school professional development priorities

As well as our personalised Teacher Development Programme we run in conjunction a varied provision of CPD which addresses our whole-school improvement objectives.

These sessions can vary each year but we try to ensure they remain a focus area for at least a few subsequent years to allow staff to embed their knowledge and build on previous learning. This provision includes:

  • Whole-school training developing a teaching toolkit of strategies.
  • Sessions focusing on whole-school literacy, diversity and SEND.
  • A new staff induction programme.
  • National College membership for all staff with targeted CPD identified.
  • Literacy leads with a member of each department committed to leading literacy within that subject area.
  • A Teaching and Learning Forum which meets every half-term, includes all our lead practitioners as well as being open to all willing staff, and which focuses on smaller, more immediate developmental areas.
  • A department coaching model with regular learning walks which feed into coaching conversations to support improvements in teaching practice.
  • The disaggregation of a training day to allow staff time to read and implement their choice of an academic book purchased for them through the training budget.

 

Finding the time to make professional development work

None of this approach to CPD would work without careful planning of the school calendar and the 1,265 calculations to ensure staff have the time and capacity to engage with training.

Dedicated time is given to professional development and the associated meetings and preparation time. Reference to the research into effective professional development from the Education Endowment Foundation (Collin & Smith, 2021) has been instrumental in shaping our approach. Its 14 mechanisms of professional development form the foundations of our planning:

  • Building knowledge: We break-down our training sessions into smaller chunks to avoid cognitive overload and revisit prior learning.
  • Motivating teachers: Our PIP process allows staff autonomy to set their own goals. We consistently base our training on research and our coaching culture helps to provide affirmation.
  • Developing teaching techniques: Our pedagogical training sessions complement our department coaching model, with time for instruction, modelling and rehearsing techniques, arranging support, and providing feedback.
  • Embedding practice: Our training is cyclical allowing teachers to action plan and repeat deliberate practice to refine their techniques.

Each year we survey our staff on the professional development programme and feedback is always very positive. Staff value the level of autonomy offered to them as well as the wide range of opportunities available.

 

Advice for others

  • It is important to cater for all and ensure equal opportunities – design a universal offer but with opportunities for personalised provision.
  • Plan your CPD calendar carefully to include time for the implementation of professional development – give staff time to go away and embed their learning.
  • Be honest with your staff about training budget constraints as it will help to ensure that they understand requests have to be cost-effective and impactful.
  • Encourage an on-going dialogue within school about professional development, sharing best practice and cascading learning between colleagues and departments.

 

 

Further information & resources