In the past, teachers’ professional development worked liked this: pick up a booklet of local authority or government courses for teachers, spot something that looks useful, interesting, or in a nice part of the country and fill in the form. Now you’re involved in continuing professional development or CPD and each course or session you attend has to fit two different, and occasionally opposing, strategies: your long-term career plans and the needs of the school.

The task of keeping all that in balance, within a budget, across the staff of a school is increasingly delegated to a specialist CPD co-ordinator. Sue Kelly rightly perceives that although theories of CPD are important, the co-ordinator’s job is very much about practicalities.

She succeeds very well in showing how it can be done - starting from self-evaluation, moving into ways of presenting its importance and then on to ways of planning and organising staff development. Her chapter on evaluating the impact of CPD is particularly good. Often, she says, teachers have been asked whether they thought a particular activity was good for them, when the real question is to do with effects on classroom learning.

The book comes with a CD containing material that can be adapted to a particular school’s needs