Professional development for teachers has long been seen as a vital way to ensure continuous improvement in the quality of learning in schools.

However, delivering training and monitoring the impact of training sessions or courses that staff attend at scale - such as in a multi-academy trust, or in our case, a global schools group with more than 100 schools in 16 countries, teaching 12 different curricula in eight languages - is tricky to say the least.

After all, we want to ensure all staff and settings have the same opportunity to access high-quality training - but we also know they will need to have the flexibility to adapt that training to suit their geographical and cultural context.

Outside expertise 

We took the decision to work with the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society to deliver bespoke programmes for our staff, so that we knew who was delivering the training, when and to who, and could be assured of its quality.

The first course involved UCL working with us to create a nine-month Team Fellowship Programme. This enables staff that attend to develop the skills to lead research and development activities in their schools.

Through a combination of online workshops, tutorials and classroom-based research, participants innovate their own practice within their distinctive school contexts.

This enhances their analytical skills, satisfies their appetite for learning and helps them develop ideas that really work for their students in their setting.

Classroom impact

Since launching in 2018, two cohorts of schools have completed this programme and we have already seen tangible educational improvements.

For example, at Southbank International School in London, leaders changed their feedback practices when they found that one-to-one feedback to students was far more effective than marking work once students had gone home.

Other cohorts have also looked into how feedback could encourage greater self-reflection and independence in students.

At first, findings from the programmes were shared through videos and “learn and share” sessions at schools, but for the next programme, insights will be hosted on our online knowledge-sharing platform.

Leadership lessons

During this academic year, we have launched a second course - entitled the Senior Leader Enquiry Programme - that is designed to support our strategic focus on building capacity in our leadership team by ensuring staff have the ability to learn key leadership skills in professional learning and pedagogy.

To do this, teams of two to three school leaders will spend 20 months developing their leadership skills by answering questions they bring to the course about their own leadership development priorities and specific needs within their schools.

With the help of UCL researchers, they can then explore creative solutions, test them out in classrooms, and refine these with assistance and input from a series of UCL-led tutorials and workshops.

A long journey

While the first cohorts have just begun this training, I can’t wait to see the outcomes and the impact this has for their schools and others in our group when they share what they learn with their peers.

After all, we all only get better by continually learning and sharing to ensure that we deliver the highest-quality education for our students.

For me, these programmes underline the importance of creating a culture of continuous learning across our group so we are truly living the essence of our mantra at Cognita - to be the best at getting better.

Dr Simon Camby is chief education director at Cognita

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