CPD: getting it right

Continuing professional development (CPD) is essential to the success of your school and the achievement of your pupils. But how do you create the right conditions for effective CPD, particularly when budgets are under pressure? Susan Robinson, headteacher of Cherry Orchard Primary School and Children's Centre in Birmingham takes a closer look.

I’m sure that budget pressures feature in many of the conversations you have with colleagues and fellow leaders nowadays.

It’s probably also the case that you’ve speculated about what effect this will have on all those areas that used to be a given – CPD, for example.

As Jeremy Sutcliffe’s piece in the June issue of ldr stressed, CPD is one of those areas that shouldn’t be seen as an easy economy.

The challenge now for schools is to maintain quality CPD but within budgetary constraints. We can do this by prioritising those areas we feel are crucial to raising the standards and quality of children’s learning. It’s about being more rigorous about the value of all external training – and trying to deliver more CPD ourselves through a cluster or network-based approach.

At my own school, Cherry Orchard Primary School and Children’s Centre in Birmingham, our aim is to balance the individual requirements and requests of each member of staff with those of the school so that we maximise the advantages of highly skilled and motivated staff for the benefit of children’s learning.

The starting point of any CPD programme is deciding what we want to deliver, who will get it, when and how. It’s important this is seen by colleagues as a fair, equitable and open process. At Cherry Orchard we use a team of staff led by an assistant headteacher that includes our school business manager.

They prepare a training plan which includes costs and is based on requests for professional development derived from various sources. This includes data from performance management, classroom observations of teaching and learning, assessments of pupil performance, pupil and staff questionnaires and interviews, curriculum and other audits of practice.

While we make sure that all staff have access to local and national development programmes I believe that some of the most successful professional growth is ‘in-house’. Our staff are encouraged to offer coaching, training and demonstrations in areas they feel comfortable leading, and to request training in areas they feel less confident about.

But like others have said, life is what happens when you’re busy making plans, so we ensure that our training plan has flexibility by reviewing and amending the plan as part of our school’s evaluation processes. We measure the impact and report it to the governing body.

I spoke to heads in four schools around the country and asked them to describe to me what CPD looked like in their schools. Here’s what they had to say.

“Everyone should have an understudy”

Holding staff CPD away from the school site is an important factor for Verity Kenyon, headteacher of Kymbrook and Thurleigh Lower Schools Federation in Bedfordshire.

“It’s important to have an environment where colleagues can give their full attention. It’s also a morale booster,” she says.

It’s also crucial to the future leadership of the school. “Individual professional development is crucial to my deep belief in succession planning; everyone should have an ‘understudy’ where possible ensuring that the school runs smoothly no matter what the issues,” she adds.

But CPD doesn’t stop at formal development and training, Verity believes. “I believe in supporting education in general and my staff. Parents know they can approach the school and be supported in any form of educational progression. This does not necessarily have to impact on the schools but is supported simply to foster the values of enjoying learning.”

“It works best if staff attending training share highlights with staff”

Inclusion was an important motivating factor for Birmingham headteacher Julie-Anne Tallon when she began an audit of Abbey Catholic Primary School’s staff CPD.

“In our school, it seemed to me that historically the same people always went on courses and that anything delivered in-house was not recognised as CPD,” she said. “I took note of those people who had, and had not, received training and we made a conscious effort to make sure that previous non-attendees were fully involved.”

Establishing just what impact CPD has on the ‘bottom line’ – teaching and learning – is another essential element. “Analysis of previous CPD showed me that impact for the whole school was not always there,” Julie-Anne explains. “For us, it works best if staff attending training share highlights with their peers. This has been successful and raised the profile of some teachers within the team, as they delivered staff meetings.”

It’s not just about developing senior colleagues and those aspiring to those positions. “We send dinner supervisors and our caretaker on externally provided courses as well. This has been very positive. They see it as an outward sign of how valued they are and the importance of their role. Next steps for this are dinner supervisors working in other schools to see practice in other settings. Some of the best training is networking. Surely this applies at all levels?”

It also makes sense to take advantage of other schools that you may be partnering with. Julie-Anne uses links forged in her local and Catholic school clusters to invite representatives from other schools to school training days. “Some of the best training has been when teachers visit another school to see good practice,” she says. “They come back excited having seen real life practice.”

Successful CPD needs to be relevant, says Julie-Anne. “Like a good lesson, the learners need to be hooked. Inspired by my associate heads training I have tried to develop a more workshop style approach to in-house CPD with use of pairs, triads and groups. It's still not perfect but it's getting better.”

“Staff are expected to identify how effective CPD is by evaluating its impact on themselves and on pupil learning”

The impact of CPD upon teaching and learning is also a strong factor for Wendy Garrard, headteacher of St Mary’s Church of England School in Suffolk.

“Effective CPD should have considerable impact on the quality of teaching and therefore learning,” she says.

All staff are assigned coaches and mentors and they are expected to evaluate the impact of the CPD on themselves and on pupil learning. Training opportunities are linked to school development plan priorities and staff maintain a CPD record which is used for performance management.

The evolution of the school’s CPD strategy continues, says Wendy. “We’re planning to develop a more focused ‘opportunities framework' for all teachers but especially those in the early years of their careers,” she says.

“We’ve just had a school improvement day run entirely by our staff”

At Swanshurst School and Specialist Science College in Birmingham deputy headteacher Andrea Marsden and colleagues have developed what they call a cyclical approach to self-review and professional development in which CPD plays an intrinsic part.

“On completion of the whole school self evaluation we identify key priorities and targets. These, in turn, become the priorities for the school improvement partner (SIP) and our whole school improvement days,” says Andrea.

“The key priorities from the SIP, alongside those identified by all teams in their own self evaluation in turn become the Team Improvement Plan and performance management targets, the basis for team CPD in the year.“

This approach was used to evaluate a subject team’s performance in teaching for outstanding learning. A Teacher Effectiveness Enhancement Programme (TEEP) trained member of staff did some ‘learning walks’ alongside a coach, during which they identified some key issues which then became performance management targets for the team. The team collaborated with the coach to trial a range of strategies, including a ‘no textbook fortnight’.

“The impact has been tremendous on two levels," says Andrea. “The team now share their planning and ideas a lot more and in our follow up observations lessons have really shifted in terms of effective learning.”

“The performance review remains the opportunity to discuss personal development”

At the Arthur Terry and Stockland Green Federation in Birmingham the development needs of support staff are as important as those of teaching staff.

Trevor Smith, Strategic Business Manager, says: “While the concept of and provision for CPD for teachers is long established, the explosion of support staff appointments in the last 10 years has outpaced the availability of externally based vocational training.

“However, having a library of relevant courses to call upon is only part of the programme to skill up a diverse range of support staff, some of whom are now taking up roles traditionally undertaken by teachers, such as head of year or achievement coordinator.”

For Trevor and his colleagues, it is the performance review, or interim one to one discussion, which remains the opportunity to discuss personal development.

“Staff are tasked to set their own goals for personal development. Their team leaders are responsible for helping them achieve these goals with particular reference to the evaluation framework, school development plan and value for money.”

But CPD isn’t just about staff training says Trevor. Leadership is key. “Team leaders are the key to success,” he says. “Investing in their leadership and management skills, encouraging them to work as a team, sharing issues in a supportive and blame-free environment, coaching them, empowering them, trusting them and valuing them, all combine to enable them to reflect the ethos required in our cleaner, technician or lunch supervisor.”