I was intrigued and a little disappointed to see the prominence given to Ewan Hunter’s comment (TESS, February 4) that the critical skills programme training is expensive.
The cost of a day’s training is pound;117. This is cheaper than virtually all other commercially available training where full cost recovery is necessary. For this pound;117, a delegate will be in a group limited to 25 in number and will work with two or three highly qualified trainers. For this quality, it is not expensive.
The difficulty with funding the training is that the course lasts six days.
Those who are asking for the training to be cheaper are in effect asking for it to be shorter.
During the Learning Unlimited conference, at which Ewan Hunter spoke, Professor Ted Wragg drew attention to the impact critical skills is having in Jersey which, in his view, was unprecedented. This has come about because Jersey ensured that teachers experienced and benefited from the full six days.
It is the powerful effects that CSP is having on classrooms up and down the UK that convinces us that the training model should not be compromised.
CSP training is not expensive. It is extensive and fundholders have a choice either to pay for people to go on cheap one-day courses which make little or no difference to what happens in classrooms or invest in quality training which does.
Chris Dickinson
Chairman
Network Educational Press
