Professional Development & Training

Most professional development is a day out. Ours is built to change something a teacher does on Monday, and then to check in six weeks later that it stuck.

A development session with the people who have to teach on Monday
Group work, which is a skill before it is a seating plan

Training

The service

What this actually is.

A training day that everybody enjoys and nobody applies is an expensive staff social. We design programmes backwards from a specific change in classroom practice — a questioning technique, a marking policy, a way of opening a lesson — and we build the follow-up into the design rather than hoping it happens.

Sessions are run by practising school leaders and teachers, on your site, with your students' work in the room. Where a programme runs across a term we sequence it so each session lands between the last one being tried and the next one being needed.

The room the training has to survive contact with
The room the training has to survive contact with

Coverage

What this covers.

Eight strands of work, each one explained and pictured. Take the whole of it, or the one strand your school is short on.

  • Teacher training

    Subject and phase-specific training on planning, delivery, differentiation and assessment, using your curriculum and your students' work rather than generic examples.

  • Leadership development

    Middle and senior leadership programmes: line management, holding standards, running a department, and having the conversation nobody wants to have.

  • Classroom management

    Routines, expectations and de-escalation, taught as practised skills rather than as a policy document, with coaching in real lessons.

  • Lesson planning

    Planning that fits in the time teachers actually have, with shared schemes of work so a good lesson is written once for the department.

  • Teaching methodologies

    Enquiry, activity-based and student-centred approaches introduced with the classroom-management scaffolding that makes them survive a full class.

  • Communication and soft skills

    Parent conversations, written reports, and the professional communication that decides how a school is experienced from outside it.

  • Student-centred learning

    Practical routes to giving students more of the thinking, without losing the pace or the coverage the curriculum requires.

  • Workshops and continuous development

    A calendar of short, repeatable sessions across the year, with observation and coaching between them so practice compounds.

Deliverables

What you end up holding.

Deliverables, not intentions. Each of these is a thing that exists at the end of the engagement and can be pointed at.

  1. A training calendar

    Sessions sequenced across the year against your term dates and your improvement priorities.

  2. Session materials

    Slides, handouts and exemplars your staff keep, built around your curriculum rather than a generic sample.

  3. Coaching in real lessons

    Follow-up observation and feedback for the staff who want it, in the weeks after a session, not months later.

  4. An impact review

    What changed in classrooms, what did not, and what the next cycle should therefore address.

Looking ahead

Where we are taking training with AI.

Training fails in the gap between the workshop and the Tuesday lesson. AI is the first tool we have seen that can live inside that gap, so that is precisely where we are putting it.

  • A pathway per teacher, not per staffroom

    Development plans built from observation evidence and the school's priorities rather than from whichever course happens to be running this term.

    What that looks like

    Each teacher opens a plan naming the next two things to work on, and where in the timetable to practise them.

  • A coaching companion between sessions

    A private tool a teacher can rehearse with — lesson openings, questioning, behaviour scripts — patient, unembarrassing, and available on a Sunday evening.

    What that looks like

    A new teacher practises the first five minutes of a lesson ten times before standing in front of thirty children.

  • Observation evidence that adds up

    Lesson observations captured in one structure, so a year of them becomes a picture of the school rather than a folder of forms.

    What that looks like

    Questioning shows up as the whole school's weakest strand, and next term's training plan writes itself.

In development, and labelled that way deliberately. Ask where each of these stands when you enquire — we will tell you what is running, what is being built and what is still on the bench.

The route

What happens if you enquire.

The same five stations every project travels, applied to training.

  1. Enquiry

    You tell us the practice you want to change, or hand us the inspection point you have been asked to address.

  2. Programme proposal

    A costed programme: sessions, sequence, who runs them, and how the follow-up works.

  3. Design and preview

    You see the outline and the materials before they are delivered, and we adjust them to your curriculum and your staff.

  4. Delivery

    Sessions run on site, spaced so each one lands between the last being tried and the next being needed.

  5. Follow-up and review

    Coaching in lessons, then a written review of what changed. The review is what turns training into development.

Questions

Questions we get asked.

Can you train during term time?

Yes, and we usually prefer it. Training that happens near a real lesson gets applied to a real lesson; August-only training competes with everything else a teacher is trying to remember.

How many staff can attend a session?

Workshops work best between twelve and thirty. Above that it becomes a lecture, and lectures do not change classroom practice.

Do you certify the training?

We provide attendance and completion records suitable for your professional-development files. We do not issue accredited qualifications and will not imply that we do.

Start the conversation

Tell us what you need for training.

Whether that is thirty teachers, one laboratory, or a building that opens in September, the first conversation is the same.

Start an enquiry