Does your CPD have a direct impact on school improvement?

School CPD - Everybody discusses it and nobody argues that it shouldn't happen. After all, if there was no professional development how would we progress?

But there’s plenty of professional development going on in school which just ticks boxes or satisfies a requirement for ‘something to be done.’

It certainly doesn’t always help a school improve.

For evidence of this you just have to look for the stifled yawns, eye rolling and blank stares at your next school inset day.

If there is any paperwork evaluating the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the training then it might just be a few ticks on an evaluation sheet which are then filed away in a lever arch folder and never seen again.

I think this happens because there is still a lack of understanding from leaders of what truly effective CPD is and whether it moves a school forward, as well as uncertainty around how to track the impact ofteacher CPD.

In tough financial times like today it has never been more important for CPD coordinators to know which professional development delivers the very best value for money.

I’d characterise school CPD as a bit like a huge set menu meal for thousands of people. This approach is, on the face of it, effective – many people engaging in many things. You’re bound to satisfy a few appetites and some people will even enjoy it. But there will be many people who don’t get what they want or more importantly, what they need. These people might well go hungry and be turned off the experience for the rest of their life.

There might be a multitude of reasons why not enough priority is being given to identifying the most appropriate CPD at the moment. This might be down to a lack of meaningful articulation of needs, a lack of context for evaluation and impact, unrealistic expectations associated with impact of CPD, or a lack of consistency around the value and nature of CPD.

How can you ensure CPD leads to school improvement?

So how can you and your leadership team colleagues overcome these barriers and ensure that teacher CPD returns on the investment and leads directly to individual progress and whole school improvement?

An excellent starting point can be a couple of well chosen questions. Ask your colleagues if they know how their CPD directly relates to school improvement. I doubt that they all do and the further you are from the headteacher’s ‘vision’ for the school the less connection or relevance you will see.

The next question to ask is, if an individual can’t convey or demonstrate how their own CPD relates to not only school development planning but their own wider development, why are they doing it?

While the pinnacle of successful CPD is an evidence base of positive impact, the foundation stone is the identification and understanding of what we need to do and what success or impact will look like.

I would suggest that the identification and analysis of individual professional development should be given a much greater importance. Quite simply this means asking more questions of ourselves and our colleagues about what we need to do to in order to move forward.

Supplying the evidence of CPD impact

Perhaps more problematic is how to supply the evidence of impact. My advice would be to look first at the actual impact itself and then link that back to the most relevant CPD event. In this way you can build up a rich picture of the effectiveness of each CPD activity. This helps you track which CPD activities result in tangible changes in the practice of the colleagues and therefore contributes to schoolimprovement – and which don’t.

This can then be influential in terms of future CPD planning decisions and help the school arrive at a point where all its CPD has an integral part in school improvement.

Interestingly we are always looking at the performance of pupils and assessing the quality of learning but there is still not enough good practice around that measures the productiveness of CPD and what that means in terms of quality of teaching.

Take an example, where a decision might be made to send a senior colleague on some leadership training about how to manage teams.

They will attend the training and then evaluate it. They will say how good it was, how effective they think it will be and what they will do differently as a result of receiving the training, and from where they expect to draw evidence of this.

At a later point that individual might be working on the school improvement plan. One priority area of the plan might be to improve leadership and management. They might write in the plan that they have recently introduced a series of peer led management meetings across the school and that this has enabled a much greater shared responsibility of leadership of the school. In other words they are describing impact or changes.

Once they have written that they should ask whether any of the CPD that has been delivered previously has been relevant to these changes. By ticking against a piece of CPD you establish a clear link between the CPD delivered and a tangible piece of school improvement. A clear, evidence based picture is built up of the great value and impact of that particular piece of CPD. This gives you and your colleagues a strong guide as to what CPD works in your school context.

Empowering teachers

For teachers this approach to evaluation gives them a real stake in the process. It makes it easier for them to provide evidence of the impact of their CPD and also means that future CPD will be informed by them because an explicit path is made between CPD and the impact it has had on school improvement.

This approach has a powerful effect on the bottom line as well because all of the money invested in CPD will deliver tangible, measurable school improvement and this will make future spending decisions that much easier.

With budgets decreasing schools have to be absolutely sure that the money they have to spend on CPD works. It’s now time to make CPD really count.

Keith Wright is MANAGING DIRECTOR of school information management specialist Bluewave.SWIFT.  He has worked with hundreds of schools during in the past decade supporting institutional leadership and management. For the past six years Keith has worked with Leeds City Council to develop their quality standards framework for adoption by schools in the UK and overseas. He has also advised overseas education ministries on raising school standards through the effective use of school improvement support systems. For further information go to www.bluewaveswift.co.uk