Tuesday 21st October 2025, 9am-5pm | Plaisterers’ Hall, London
Three-quarters of teachers say their professional development doesn’t reflect the needs of their students. Around half a billion pounds is spent on teacher CPD every year – but too often, it’s not creating the change schools need.
Teachers are leaving. Workload is crushing. And professional development that should help is often just one more thing on the list.
Something has to change.
On 21st October, we’re launching the Teacher Development: Landscape in 2025 report – the first comprehensive look at what CPD actually looks and feels like in schools right now. Not the policy vision. The reality.
And we’re bringing together the people who can help us figure out what to do next:
Will remind us why we got into teaching in the first place – and why reconnecting to purpose matters more than ever when retention is in crisis.
Will show us why real professional growth starts with connection, not more training – and what that actually looks like in practice.
(Deputy Director, DfE) will share early findings from the NPQ review and give you a chance to shape what happens next.
Three of the biggest names in teacher support will come together to discuss ideas on how we can make schools places that teachers actually want to be. Baroness Mary Bousted (former leader of the NEU), Gemma Scotcher (Education Support), and Emma Sheppard (Maternity Teacher Paternity Teacher Project) will explore how to make schools places teachers actually want to stay – from quick wins to cultural transformation.
Plus: join the debate about ‘didagogy’ – why teaching teachers requires different approaches than teaching students, and why that matters for your school.
Sam Gibbs (GMET) and Tracey Goodyear (Mercian Trust) will dive into CPD that’s actually working in their trusts – from the big picture (culture and inclusion) to the nuts and bolts (timelines, Power BI dashboards, and quality assurance).
This day is for anyone who leads professional development or wants to create school cultures where teachers thrive:
Date: Tuesday 21st October 2025 Time: 9am-5pm (registration from 8.45am)
Where? Plaisterers’ Hall, 1 London Wall, London EC2Y 5JU
Price
Central London location with excellent transport links.
We’re at a turning point. Teacher retention is a crisis. Budgets are tight. And the professional development that should be helping often isn’t.
But some schools are getting it right. They’re creating cultures where teachers feel heard, valued, and genuinely supported to grow. Where professional development isn’t a tick-box exercise but something that transforms practice.
This conference is about learning from those schools – and figuring out how to make it happen in yours.
Last year, Mark Nichols (Assistant Principal, Avanti Grange Secondary School) called our conference “a profound journey of exploration, reflection and discussion.”
This year, with new research revealing the scale of the challenge and the best minds in teacher development helping us solve it, feels even more important.
We’d love you to be there.
