How well is your school’s CPD programme working to grow the skills of your staff and improve outcomes for your pupils?
We know that high-quality CPD can have a strong impact on both of these areas, but assessing the quality of professional development to adjust or improve it is complicated.
At Teacher Development Trust, we created the unique Diagnostic Review process to make this process as easy as possible for school leaders. So far, over 500 schools have benefited from these valuable insights for sustainable change.
Through a series of interviews with your staff, as well as an anonymous whole-staff survey, our Professional Learning Leads will benchmark your school against the 7 Domains of People-Powered School Improvement. Once we’ve identified areas of strength and improvement, you’ll be given a report of our findings, along with an Emerging, Bronze, Silver or Gold award.
After the report, we will continue to work with you to create a long-term change plan and support its implementation through termly coaching calls and access to online resources. Your CPD Lead will also benefit from core access to our CPD Leadership Hub, including all seven Online Learning Modules.
This programme contains:
– Full Diagnostic Review
– Follow-up coaching support
– Core hub access for one year
The Building Expert Schools Programme can benefit any school, setting or trust with a goal to build a stronger CPD provision for their staff.
Part of our Diagnostic Review process involves working with a leader with responsibility for staff development or school improvement, who usually also serves as our primary contact.
This could be a role such as Professional Development Lead, Head of Teaching and Learning, Deputy Head, Head Teacher, Trust Leader, Director of School Improvement, Director of People, or Executive Leader.
Each one of our Professional Learning Leads has personal experience of education leadership as well as a deep knowledge of the research behind what makes effective professional development. You can find out more about them below.
Although the review is a benchmarking process, our aim is to act as a “critical friend” to help your school take steps towards positive change rather than stand in judgment.
After establishing some basic information about your school or trust, an anonymous staff survey will be sent to you to gather insights from your whole staff team. Your Professional Learning Lead will also be in contact to organise a suitable day to conduct short interviews with a cross-section of your team (including class teachers, support staff, and senior staff).
These interviews are usually carried out online during the school day and are intended to help us find out more information about the support offered from a variety of perspectives. These conversations are thoughtful, engaging, and relaxed in tone.
Our professional learning leads will then bring all of these insights together into a comprehensive report. You will receive this along with recommendations for your next steps and an Emerging, Bronze, Silver, or Gold award depending on the current strength of the CPD provision.
Our free reflection tool (link to reflection tool) is a quick way to start considering the next steps for CPD development as an individual, it takes about 15 minutes. Both processes are based around our 7 Domains of People-Powered School Improvement.
However, our Diagnostic Review is far more in-depth and explores multiple perspectives within the school to build up a more complete picture. This enables you to understand and navigate barriers to change and attitudes to CPD within your culture.
In over a decade of our work with hundreds of CPD leaders, we’ve identified 7 important aspects leaders should consider when they aim to improve CPD across a whole school, setting or trust. These are:
You can find out more about them here (link to 7 domains page)
Following the Diagnostic Review, your Professional Learning Lead (PLL) will work with you to create a long-term change plan, identifying and implementing a strategy to achieve staff buy-in and drive school improvement through people development.
Putting this change plan into action is supported by termly coaching calls from your PLL as well as access to our digital Diagnostic Review tool, and core access to all seven modules on our CPD Leadership Hub.
We want to support you to get the most impact out of your CPD budget, whether that be by engaging with government-funded programmes, further TDT training or qualifications or engaging with external CPD Providers. Our aim as a charity is to help you implement the very best CPD for your setting.
We have worked with many Multi Academy Trusts and groups of schools to design packages of strategic CPD Diagnostic Review and support.
To discuss what might work best for your Multi-Academy Trust or group of schools, please get in touch for a free consultation with our team. (link to contact page)
Our post-review survey consistently finds that 100% of leaders would recommend the Diagnostic Review as part of school development planning.
Working with our Professional Learning Leads helps schools like yours to gain the insights, support and confidence needed to embed a professional culture of coaching, curiosity and growth throughout their whole school or trust.
Log in to TDT Learn below to access the diagnostic tool and other online resources.