Guidance on occupational standards

In January 2010, Ofsted’s report ‘Workforce reform in schools: has it made a difference?’ made the following recommendation: the TDA should ‘help the wider workforce and its managers gain a sure knowledge and understanding of the national occupational standards and the career development framework by providing accessible information and guidance.’

The TDA’s booklet, ‘National occupational standards for supporting teaching and learning in schools’, is one piece of that guidance. Aimed at school leaders, it explains how the standards and accompanying guidance can help with a wide range of staff development activities.

CPD Leadership training and development programme

Numbers of people registering for the CPD Leadership training and development programme continue to grow, with January and February showing a large jump in the numbers of participants registered on the online module. The programme was also promoted recently via seminar at the Education Show in Birmingham, which was attended by delegates from a range of roles within the school workforce.

We are currently developing additional publicity materials to help people to promote the programme to existing and potential CPD leaders at a local level. If you would be interested in receiving this and helping to promote the unit, please contact Steve Jolley for further information. If you would like to register for the online programme then you can do this by visiting the National College website.

There are now five courses offering masters level credits being provided by higher education institutions across the country. These can either be taken as stand-alone units or as part of a full masters programme, and there are a range of different study options offered by the institutions including distance learning options. Contact details of organisations currently running the programme can be found on our website.

Cluster-based professional development pilot

Since September we have been working with a pilot group of schools to explore the benefits of schools working in clusters to plan, lead, manage and evaluate professional development for the children’s workforce. Cluster-based professional development has two aspects: schools collaborating to enhance professional development in ways which add value over and above the impact of schools working separately; and managing the resources available for CPD – people and money – in ways that increase the capacity of individual schools.

We want to find out from this pilot whether or not working in clusters leads to:

• Better planning – enabling schools to take a more strategic approach to professional development
• Better provision – providing more opportunities for staff to work collaboratively, to share and reflect on classroom practice
• Better use of resources – pooling of resources, people and funding to develop greater capacity to meet the needs of all members of the children’s workforce
  

The pilot is taking place in the context of a review of the designation of Training Schools and Teaching Schools. The intention is that the newly designated schools will play a key role in the development and leadership of a nationwide network of professional development clusters from September 2011.

There are 28 clusters in the pilot, consisting of 288 schools across the age range. The clusters are of varying size and composition and are represented in all nine of the government office regions. All clusters began by benchmarking their current practice against a set of criteria covering leadership and governance, resource management, planning, the range of provision, and impact evaluation. They’ve since developed action plans based on this self-assessment, which they are in the process of implementing.

Impacts of the action plans will be evaluated between April and July, leading to the production of a framework to support the leadership and management of professional development across clusters. The framework will be available from autumn 2010. We are now planning a second phase of the project, which will significantly increase the number of clusters in the pilot. Information on the expansion of the pilot will be included in subsequent issues of tdaNews.

National CPD database – please register and rate!

Have you recently undertaken any continuing professional development (CPD) that is listed on the CPD database? If so, we’d love to hear from you and your rating of the CPD you engaged in. Simply log in or register, if you are a new user, and rate the CPD.

If you are looking for CPD to develop yourself or your career, the database provides you with a resource to search for relevant opportunities, including those that are free. As a registered user, you can store, save and edit CPD in your ‘My Opportunities’ area by clicking ‘Proceed to CPD’ on those you book onto. Remember to log back in after engaging with the CPD in order to review and rate!

And, if you’re a school, college or local authority, it’s a great time to either upload your provision or to update your current offerings. By encouraging members of the school workforce to rate your CPD you can help endorse it as a tried and tested opportunity so that future visitors can book with confidence.

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Effective practices in continuing professional development

‘Effective practices in continuing professional development – lessons from schools’ is a newly published book, which presents case studies of schools’ journeys towards effective CPD practice as part of a TDA national project. Each case study makes reference to the nine factors identified in the book as underpinning effective practice. It tells the story of how schools set and achieve goals, and the challenges and successes along the way. The book is published in conjunction with the Institute of Education (IoE), whose London Centre for Leadership in Learning team played a key role in the project. It will be of interest to practitioners and professionals who design and develop CPD opportunities within all sectors of education, as well as all working within the strategic leadership of CPD. Details of how the book can be ordered are available on the IoE website.

Support staff CPD – case studies needed

As an agency, we are always seeking to refresh and update the CPD guidance we offer. A key element of this comes in the form of case studies of schools or individual members of the workforce. At this time, we are particularly interested in increasing our stock of case studies of effective CPD for support staff. Can you help?

We would love to hear from individuals who can share an experience of effective CPD and the associated benefits for their pupils and colleagues. If you would like the positive recognition that comes from contributing to such case studies, please contact Andrew Callaghan at the TDA.