If The Only Lasting Memory Of CPD Is The Quality Of Snacks, We᾿re In Trouble
The best training can be measured in terms of its impact on learning
“The children aren’t going back until Wednesday, though, because the teachers have got two INSET days,” my local newsagent told me. “What exactly are INSET days?”
I wasn’t prepared for the question and gave a remarkably garbled answer that left her totally perplexed. Then another customer came in for a bag of crisps and the shopkeeper looked visibly relieved. She rounded off the conversation by saying to me, “I thought the teachers drank tea, ate biscuits and got the classroom walls ready.”
In July 2016, the DfE published the ‘Standard for teachers’ professional development’. The guidance linked to this document sets out generic expectations for ongoing training, for example, that teachers ‘keep their knowledge and skills as teachers up-to-date and be self-critical’.
There are also recommendations that appear to suggest greater rigour, for instance that providers of professional development ‘Request information about their participants’ prior knowledge, experience and goals and use this in the design of their activities to secure progression.’ Although I do try to tweak my training sessions to suit the audience, it looks as though I will have to pay a lot more attention to personalisation in the future.
The guidance document outlines many features of ‘effective professional development’ and these all seem perfectly reasonable. However, I’m not entirely confident this will eliminate a perennial issue with training courses: that some are simply boring and badly taught. One teacher told me before an INSET day that she was bracing herself for ‘being talked at for four hours’.
Hopefully, none of us would consider it acceptable to teach pupils in such a way, but this sort of ‘training’ is definitely still out there. I attended one such course where all 100 delegates were issued with a handout of the 48 slides in the presentation. The trainer proceeded to read out every one, with the result that I lost consciousness at around slide 17.
Fortunately, not only are there some excellent training courses out there but there’s also the acknowledgement that ‘training activities’ can take many different forms, including observation of colleagues, visiting other schools and so on. One teacher told me that the best CPD she’d had was to accompany me on a learning walk across school – even though my input was minimal.
For me, the headline from the DfE document has to be ‘Professional development should have a focus on improving and evaluating pupil outcomes᾿. As with teaching itself, I believe we can only measure the effectiveness of professional development through its impact on a teacher’s practice, ultimately shown through pupil outcomes.
You may be familiar with the muted groan that is sometimes audible when the evaluation forms are handed out at the end of a training session. Given that some people hurriedly tick ‘excellent’ regardless of their actual views on the course, and that some are heavily influenced by the quality of the biscuits, I’m surprised so much value is placed on such evaluations.
Surely we should be evaluating further down the line, once teachers have had the chance to implement strategies and look at the impact on pupils’ achievement? Leaders really need to focus on whether training activities have actually made a difference.
On several occasions I’ve been told by school leaders that they have addressed weaknesses by sending particular teachers ‘on a course’. The leaders in question had no idea about course content or how to judge impact, but were hopeful that something magical would happen to instantly make everything better.
The DfE guidance document recommends that ‘teachers should take responsibility for their own professional development’. I agree – teachers should be encouraged to talk about the training and support that will make a real difference to their practice, rather than feeling CPD is something imposed upon them. A range of personalised, bespoke training activities can make an incredible difference, not just to a teacher’s classroom practice but to their morale.
When a teacher moves from feeling negative and deskilled to enthusiastic and motivated, this in itself can be enough evidence of positive impact. This doesn’t happen overnight; the DfE document recommends that training activities ‘should be part of a sustained programme, typically for more than two terms’.
And there’ll always be a place for high-quality biscuits.
Julie Price Grimshaw is a teacher, teacher trainer, and education consultant (selfpropelledlearning.co.uk). She has been involved in school inspections since 2001, and her book is Self-propelled Learning and Effective Teaching is available on Amazon.
