In my first few years of teaching, I attended several CPD courses. These took place midweek, usually from 4pm to 6pm once a week for a few months. Very occasionally, I was persuaded to attend Saturday courses and, while I’m glad I attended, I’m reticent to say I’d do the same now.
I have worked in four councils during my 15 years of teaching and have benefited hugely from local authority CPD. Whether these were focused on support for learning, educational psychology, behaviour management or autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), I would eagerly trot home with a ring binder full of new and interesting advice, which I could apply in the classroom the following week.
Somewhere along the line, though, something shifted. Whether this was because of funding cuts that prevented councils from paying for face-to-face sessions with professionals, a lack of interest or demand from teachers, or the transition from real-life interactions to virtual sessions via Zoom, Microsoft Teams and the like, things have certainly evolved.
Then came Covid. We were all indoors facing screens with almost zero opportunity to meet anyone in person. At first, I found this frustrating. But as time went on, I realised what a golden opportunity this was to delve into my own professional development without the restraints of being directed on what to do to keep in line with school-improvement plans and local and national priorities.
When Covid hit, I was two years into a three-year master’s course through City & Guilds. I jumped at the opportunity to do this back in 2018, when the EIS teaching union offered teachers a discount on the course. So I was splitting my time between classroom responsibilities, online teaching and personal study time.
Online learning brought its own challenges, with new knowledge required to get the most out of Google Classrooms, Teams, YouTube and Google Docs. It didn’t seem likely that courses in these would be provided by my local authority. I used my own time to become more confident, although a supportive management team and a depute head who is an IT whizz also helped.
The move into a more digital learning world has been hugely beneficial for many reasons, although I feel something special has been missed along the way. Training courses could provide teachers from different schools a rare chance to see each other in person, catch up on and share good practice and, let’s be honest, have a good moan. Instead, teachers are often very much confined to using these digital platforms in their own school, with limited exposure to others - even teachers at other schools in their council area.
I have to admit that I rarely look at local authority courses anymore, having now found so much more online to pique my interest. Despite that, while recently completing my mandatory training during our in-service days, I came across some brilliant ASD courses that were excellent and widened my knowledge a good bit.
Local councils can be great at providing CPD needs, but I feel we teachers should have more freedom to follow our own educational interests and passions - to be confident in investigating and choosing areas of development without restraint.
Last year, I discovered a programme via the Open University, on upper-primary maths, which was free and took around eight hours to complete. I had a group of high achievers that needed to be pushed; I benefited a lot from relearning strategies and testing myself before I then taught my pupils. I’d highly recommend looking at free courses available via the Open University, Google Educator and the University of Edinburgh (see links below).
I’d suggest taking some time to delve into whatever excites you. It could be ASD and regulation techniques, or you might have a passion for writing or history. There is so much out there to explore, whatever your interests and specialism.
And don’t be put off by a fiddly few minutes signing up to sites - this is a minor barrier in the way of hugely beneficial free courses that you can go through at your own pace. Back in the classroom, these might just offer what’s needed to bring your lessons to life.
Louise Darcy is a primary teacher in Scotland
