CPD Menu: The Life Of A Deputy Headteacher


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How can you differentiate professional development for colleagues?

Over the past 18 months, we have been collating the various pathways available to our teaching and support staff. In this post, you will find sections from our CPD audit and an evolving document – shared here – to capture the various CPD on offer for 200+ staff.

Teacher Development Trust:

Last year, we had a CPD Audit carried out by the Teacher Development Trust on 22nd June 2015. The TDT said: The audit is deliberately a challenging, aspirational framework and it is more about the formative process of an audit than the award level. It is also worth bearing in mind, whilst we have quite a mix of schools it is still a membership network so members are, by definition, extra interested in CPD.

The CPD quality framework looks at the following six areas:

  • Leadership and culture
  • Focus on Learning and Pedagogy
  • Evaluation of impact
  • Support and challenge
  • Processes, systems and resourcing
  • Research, innovation and evidence.

Here is a summary of the text. The graphs and survey results have not been shared.

Culture and Well-Being:

There has been a huge shift in the culture of professional learning at QK in the past couple of years. Senior leaders have ambitious goals to create a deep learning culture and staff recognise the shifts which are leading to them having more autonomy. SLT often model their own learning and take care to be visibly engaged in professional development throughout the school.

Middle leaders are becoming clearer how this new approach is being implemented in their areas. Staff members are being taken on a journey where they are learning that they are trusted more, however not all of them yet recognise this and there is more work to do to communicate this. However, the school has a strong foundation to build on where staff members are very comfortable having informal conversations with each other about teaching and also generally happy to observe and be observed… there is a growing culture of career development and a number of members of staff who had recently been supported to engage further informal development opportunities.

Needs Analysis and Evaluation:

The strategic use of [software] is a significant step forward for the school in this area. To improve further, the school needs to work more closely to capture both formal and informal conversations about professional development needs. 

Support and Challenge:

A strength of the school is that staff feel confident working with each and having informal conversations about teaching and learning. The school had some of its strongest survey responses in this section and it is impressive that 100% of colleagues said: “I work with other colleagues regularly, to support them and occasionally to support and challenge them to be even better.”

Use of Expert Knowledge:

This is an area where the school has clearly made progress and interviews suggested that staff were increasingly aware of the focus on the use of expertise, even if it hadn’t necessarily permeated their own CPD practice yet. Staff did note that they appreciate having fewer expert inputs per year and having more time to spend working on the input.

Processes and Structures:

A huge strength of the school, and something of which it can be justifiably proud, is the great investment in the CPD budget. This is highly impressive and will stand the school in good stead. It is also recognised and appreciated by staff who also note that efforts are being made to significantly increase the amount of time they have to discuss professional learning.

Research, Innovation and Evidence:

It is clear that the school has made significant progress in this area although there is further to go. Interview responses suggested that teachers recognise that more thought is going into the evidence base of CPD. With further investment into enquiry-type approaches then teachers will be able to engage more fully with the evidence base themselves …

Actions:

One of our original aims – before and after the audit – was to share what we currently offer for all staff, at all levels. The result was our CPD menu. We also offer professional development bursaries which support longer-term and more expensive CPD. For example, master and doctorate degrees.

Suggested Strengths

  1. An impressive financial investment in the CPD budget
  2. A strong informal collaborative culture within the school
  3. Examples of excellent collaborative planning and improvement within departments.

Suggested Areas for Development

  1. A move to identify fewer CPD foci with a greater focus on subject knowledge/pedagogy …
  2. Development of collaborative teacher enquiry across the school
  3. Continue to invest in CPD for all staff with a focus on ensuring that provision/support is equally available to all.

Teaching Staff / CPD menu:

The following two images are part of a larger document to provide staff with further details of what professional development on offer. Within each section, there is a short biography/photo from an existing member of staff who has outlined that pros/cons of their development. We hope this will inspire and engage other staff.

Below is the CPD we currently offer all of our teaching staff. n.b. some courses are delivered in-house and/or longer term. For example, Shadow Leadership. You will see that CPD is pitched to all levels.

CPDMenu-Feb2016 Professional Development Quintin Kynaston

Support Staff / CPD menu:

These are the CPD currently on offer all of our support staff. n.b. some courses are online, delivered in-house and/or longer term. We also offer professional development bursaries which support longer-term and more expensive CPD. For example, Level 2 and 3 courses, master and doctorate degrees.

CPDMenu-Feb2016 Professional Development Quintin KynastonYou can download the two-page file if you would like a sample of the full document, please get in touch.


11 thoughts on “CPD Menu: The Life Of A Deputy Headteacher

  1. This looks absolutely fantastic .. you’ve got me hooked on your amazing website. Total novice to the world of blogging … crazy world of inspirational ideas and thoughts to tap into.. thank you for this. would really appreciate if you send me a sample copy of CPD menu? Many thanks 😀

  2. Another fantastic resource from teacher toolkit 🙂 I would really appreciate a sample of the full document. Thank you 🙂

      1. Is this still available. Thinking of signing up to the monthly subscription but wanted to see the content of some documents first.

      2. Hello Frances, you can download this for free by adding to your basket; no subscription. It’s a template I developed as a deputy headteacher in 2017. The specific CPD content may be out of date, but the structure of the document and the idea itself works wonders.

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