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With budgets tightening, it is becoming increasingly difficult for school business managers to invest time and resources into CPD – here are nine ideas to organise it within your school
CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Teacher Toolkit
Looking forward, school business managers will need to be very creative when it comes to staff professional development. Below are 10 serious suggestions for schools to consider.
Training Days
The INSET (IN-SErvice Training) for teachers is the traditional ‘5 days per-year’ most schools adopt. Teachers are accustomed to the ‘flash in a pan’ training event which adds little impact. Thousands of schools are so used to the following model:
- Day 1 – September – welcome back, say hello to colleagues and clear out your cupboards.
- Day 2 – September – have a few meetings and sort your timetable out before the students arrive tomorrow!
- Day 3 – January – the first day back after the Christmas break. Often everyone is too tired to do anything meaningful, so often an external speaker is booked to take up the hard strain, or staff are ‘set a task’ and distributed into groups/rooms around the school and asked to return ‘documentation’ to prove you have been working.
- Day 4 – April – often the first day after Easter to allow teachers to plan and/or moderate assessments. Traditionally this would have been coursework, but with modular examinations slowly dying a death, there is less need to offer this slot as a ‘day off’ to mark coursework and moderate with colleagues.
- Day 5 – Summer term – to allow staff time to enjoy the sunshine and ‘plan for the year ahead’. Colleagues who are departing either visit their new schools or at left by the wayside as incoming colleagues meet their new teams and a new ‘vision and priorities’ document is established. If you’re lucky enough to have a few £s, you may even be asked to attend a weekend conference in a hotel. There are often mixed reactions to this request.
Twilights
Often created to keep staff three or four hours after the end of the day to work together on various priorities. The underlying reason is simply to finish the school term earlier than planned. Again, depending on the training set/asked, they can be useful, but chances are staff will be very tired after a long day in the classroom.
If you do need to keep staff in school until 7 or 8pm, what creative ways can you engage them to help reduce their workload, whilst also motivating them to be engaged with theirs and the school’s development priorities?
Long-Term CPD
Research suggests that the “duration and rhythm of effective CPD support requires a longer-term focus.”
Create a shift in the culture of professional learning and help staff recognise a model their learning. Do this by having informal conversations with each other about teaching. Designing a transparent menu that is differentiated and planned can be one huge step forward for any school. Setting this into the calendar and protecting this at all costs makes CPD a priority, even if it is 30 minutes after school, once a month.
Enquiry-Led CPD
Why is it becoming the ‘norm’ for teachers to lap-up professional development in their own time? Instead of teacher’s seeking their own weekend escapades via social media, or appraisal designating what a teacher ‘must do’, why do we not ask all staff to ‘answer their own research question‘ and report this to the rest of the staff in their school later that year? The evidence speaks for itself. The teacher and the school would be better off and more engaged.
Wednesday CPD
Do you remember the time you were at university? Every Wednesday, lectures would end early, and sports fixtures were the be-all-and-end-all of the campus. Imagine applying that model in school. Send students home early and design a CPD programme to allow staff to have more time in departments and/or together in CPD sessions.
Re-Think How?
School business managers who are in charge of professional development should rethink how they go about leading CPD for all staff. With reducing budgets and CPD being more than ‘going on a course’, schools need to be creative and look in-house for solutions. Have a think about appointing a teaching and learning team, or an extended leadership team to help build capacity and train, lead and support staff development. The priorities for all schools should be to:
- Move away from a ‘one-size fits all’ approach so individual needs are carefully considered.
- Align professional development processes, content and activities
- Design effective professional development so that both subject knowledge and subject-specific pedagogy are considered
- Ensure CPD is associated with certain activities such as explicit discussions
- Offer external input from providers/specialists to challenge orthodoxies within a school and provide diverse perspectives
- Empower teachers through collaboration and peer learning
- Offer internal leadership to help defining staff opportunities and embed cultural change.
TeachMeets
TeachMeets are organised freely, in teachers’ spare time. They are not-for-profit and are designed to bring teachers together, to have a voice and to share classroom ideas.
Increasingly, this happy-go-lucky model is being adapted into schools, where all staff must attend. The organiser often hopes to recreate the atmosphere ‘they experienced’ at another TeachMeet, forgetting that staff ‘wanted to be there’ rather than being forced to be there.
Teachers Talking
You could try something totally different and get teachers talking about teaching? Take them out of their usual environment – invest a little cash into a venue – and observe colleagues feeling invigorated and energised.
Speed Dating CPD
Speed-dating is a training format where teachers can rapidly exchange dialogue, moving from one space to another to share teaching and learning ideas. It works and teachers love it!
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