How your school trust can ensure consistent talent development
Developing great teachers is an ongoing project. It requires thinking across multiple dimensions: through an individual teacher’s career, from teacher training to leadership; within schools, so that staff can grow and learn in every role; and day-to-day, shaped around the everyday reality of a teacher’s work.
Vitally, it also needs to be consistent.
Our recently published report ‘Grow your own: Best practice for developing teaching talent in school trusts’ found several ways that multi-academy trusts can achieve this.
Why do you need consistent professional development?
Professional development is essential not just for teachers and school staff themselves, but also whole schools and multi-academy trusts. It enables great teaching now and succession planning for the future.
We can break down consistency in professional learning into three distinct areas:
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Consistency of access: do all staff have access to the same suite of teacher training and professional development programmes, as appropriate for their role?
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Consistency of quality: are there quality control measures in place to ensure that training meets the standards of your trust and aligns with your values?
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Consistency of delivery: do all staff receive a regular, structured programme of professional development as appropriate for their role? Do trainee teachers have the support they need throughout their training?
Each of these is important for different reasons. Consistent access means all staff have opportunities to develop, regardless of role or school. Consistently high-quality training leads to better teaching, while consistent delivery provides continuous development for staff.
Benefits of consistent, effective professional development and teacher training include:
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Improved staff retention in a trust
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Trusts can build shared internal expertise and best practice
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Consistently high-quality teaching which means better outcomes for students
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Teachers feel valued and supported
The most successful professional development model
How trusts structure their professional development and teacher training offer determines how effective and impactful it is – for example:
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A centralised model means better quality control and shared vision within a trust – but is less flexible, limiting local autonomy and innovation
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A devolved model with autonomy at the school level empowers schools, but can dilute consistency and reduce impact
Our report found that trusts are successfully combining the best of both worlds: central coordination, such as a trust-wide strategy and purpose, with autonomy at a school level.
Having a strong central spine that’s aligned with school priorities ensures consistency while enabling local innovation and flexibility. This model enables flexibility at a school and teacher level while ensuring training is in line with trust values, purpose and strategy.
For this model to be successful, however, it’s key to have a trust-wide shared understanding of expectations and what high quality development looks like.
How can trusts achieve consistency?
There are multiple ways trusts can ensure consistency of access to training and development, as well as consistency in quality and learning delivery.
One method is for trusts to develop their own suite of learning content that can be used across their schools – this can be done by a trust itself or by working with a provider.
A trust developing their own learning suite means they can control not only how staff access professional learning, providing consistency of access, but also the learning content available, providing a consistent quality of learning.
Implementing trust-wide standards and quality assurance is another way of providing a consistent learning offer across a trust. Setting standards across a trust helps ensure both learning quality and methods of delivery are consistent for staff across schools.
Similarly, coordinating a structured calendar of learning for all staff supports trusts to ensure all colleagues have the same opportunities to learn regardless of location, providing consistent access to learning.
Could your trust develop talent with more impact?
Read our report to understand how your trust can improve talent development to stabilise its future and improve outcomes.
Our findings are based on in-depth interviews with multi-academy trust leaders and supported by survey data from trusts of various sizes and phases.