Professional Development

Professional  Development is central to ensuring we invest in all our staff. The College has been an accredited Investor in People since 1996 and staff have benefited from excellent professional development opportunities. Our success is recognised by the General Teaching Council and Training Development Agency through our designation as a Training School.

Sawtry staff work with educational partners in the East of England to offer professional development to other schools, colleges and universities.

>Professional Development in a Learning Community

Continued Professional Development (CPD) is relevant to all staff in the College. It is about making progress in the profession, increasing skills, knowledge and understanding.  Every member of staff has the opportunity, under the performance review arrangements, to discuss their learning and development needs annually with their line manager and to set one or more development objectives. These objectives may focus on strengthening an ability to do a current job well, or on developing skills that will support future career moves – within teaching, the education world generally, or more widely. Performance review also gives an opportunity to reflect on personal learning and development needs at other points in the year. In deciding development priorities, staff will probably want to draw ideas from a number of different sources.  These could include the following:

• feedback from colleagues, a mentor, a line manager or an OFSTED inspection about what is done well and how it could be improved
• the particular expectations and responsibilities built into current job roles, or other posts within the school
• career aspirations at a particular point in a career
• views about how the nature of teaching is changing, or is likely to change over the next few years, and the new skills that this may require
• for teachers, researching evidence about the characteristics of effective teachers as set out in the new national standards for teaching.

The Annual Training Plan 200910

As part of the self evaluation process the College has identified priorities for improvement for the following academic year and linked these priorities to staff training needs.  Full details of identified staff training needs can be found in the College School Improvement Plan (SIP). 

 

College training days for the academic year 2010/11

 

Wednesday 1st September 2010          Leadership & Management Start of year routines
Friday 8th October 2010                           14-19 Reforms, Personal Tutorship
Monday 15th November  2010               Child Protection and Safe Guarding       
Tuesday 4th January 2011                      Specialist Status and Community Cohesion
Tuesday 26th April  2011                           Moderation and Assessment        

 

 

For further information about Professional Development, please see the TDA website: www.tda.gov.uk/cpd