Developing Great Leadership of CPDL by Cordingley et al (2015) identified the importance of not just focusing on development of subject knowledge, but also of pupil wellbeing and an understanding of the community your school serves.  This aligns with LDR point 6k (to build relationships of trust and mutual respect).  We concluded that it is as crucial for staff to hear from local community leaders (police, church leaders and providers of youth activities) as it is to be educated in the latest pedagogy or subject knowledge.  As such, we will prioritise these areas to gain the best understanding of the challenges our pupils face.

Reflecting on the last three years, we felt we had been adversely impacted by Covid-19.  We agreed that many online CPDL opportunities had been available but that we had not always been able to gauge the quality or the relevance – it became a somewhat aimless, scattershot approach and was not always linked to learning or revisited.  In their 2015 study, Timperley et al focused on the centrality of viewing any CPDL through the lens of ‘what impact will this have on learning?’  We agreed that this should be our over-riding focus when identifying CPDL for staff. 

We concurred that CPDL had become something of an add-on and was not linked directly to children’s learning, behaviour or wellbeing but rather focused primarily on subject knowledge or on school compliance (e.g. safeguarding, medical needs, health and safety etc.)  Whilst these are areas that need to be addressed, they do not recognise the importance of classroom relationships, or focus on the centrality of ‘impact on learning’.

In our discussions, a recurring theme was barriers to effective CPDL.  Objective 6c of the LDR is to ‘ensure that time is protected for teachers to plan, test and implement new ideas’ and this reinforces the notion that a scattershot CPDL approach will result in no lasting impact.  We therefore felt that as a school CPDL should be higher profile and more systematic.

In terms of who delivers CPD and how it is delivered, we felt the best approach was to audit our own skills (SLT and wider staff) to determine our staff skill-set and what we need to look externally for.  The work of Darling, Hammond et al (2017) underlines the importance of subject-expert led coaching, whether this be internal or external which reinforces LDR point 6e. We concluded that we are fortunate to have experience and skill in subject leadership and knowledge, but we felt we would benefit from external training/speakers on the subject of behaviour and wellbeing, so we have reached out to our Community Learning Partnership (CLP) to share the cost of INSET/Twilights delivered by experts in their field.

To conclude, we will establish the following measures to prioritise high quality CPDL:

• Make it a specific focus in Teacher and Headteacher Appraisal; identifying through meaningful discussion what personalised CPDL each teacher needs and what impact this will have on their pupils,
• Link CPDL to wider school improvement plans – it must not be an isolated focus, or an unplanned ‘add-on’; we have included a CPDL focus on our main SDP and each subject leader has prioritised whole-school teacher/TA CPDL for their subject,
• Provide dedicated time/cover to undertake CPDL and to ‘follow up’ on it, including disseminating it to the rest of the staff,
• Establish local (different community leaders) and national links to improve our access to high quality CPDL,
• Create and maintain a CPDL journal for each teacher,
• Encourage middle leaders to undertake NPQ’s to develop their strategic understanding of education and maximise their impact at school.

Want to know more? 

If you would like to know more about NPQs and how they can benefit your teaching career, explore the NPQs we offer or  get in touch with one of our friendly advisors using the details below:                                                                                                                                                 

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