Summer’s here! With lighter timetables (well, not for everyone) and less marking (certainly not this year), senior leaders might be thinking it’s a good time to consider next September. 

There’ll be things, of course, that schools have no control over, but there will also be new initiatives to plan, and the CPD that goes with them. Anything that helps to improve the experience for students and staff should be on the table for discussion. 

But how often do we really give those discussions the time they need before deciding that something that’s worked somewhere else will definitely be right for us, and we have just the person to deliver it?

So where do we start? A brief glance at Twitter seems to offer all the solutions we’d ever need to each of the difficulties we face in school. “We’ve embedded restorative practice and the results have been amazing,” someone might claim. 

“My school puts evidenced-based approaches at the heart of everything we do,” another may cry. Or: “At this school, we’re implementing ideas from the very forefront of cognitive science.” 

CPD: Investing in strategies that aren’t appropriate for your school

So much is being done so successfully that at times it can seem a mystery as to why teaching - though often rewarding - can be so challenging.

Each of those ideas can be implemented brilliantly, but “can” is the operative word. Restorative practice isn’t always carried out properly. Some of the ideas that we believe to be evidence-based are really only Twitter-based. 

There has been some discussion recently about how the actual academic work behind particular findings has been ignored, perhaps in favour of an apparently easier-to-understand but poorly understood social-media summary of what the research was about. 

The forefront of cognitive science is fascinating, but if it really is the forefront, then probably not enough is yet known so that we might apply it to classroom practice. Again, that’s not to denigrate any of these approaches. Each of them, as with others, relies on how those ideas are implemented in schools.

And that’s a problem, because we could be investing in things that appear to have been well thought out in their implementation beyond our own schools - but which aren’t, for a variety of reasons, appropriate in ours. That doesn’t mean they’re not worth trying, but they’re only worth the considerable investment that a new initiative demands if schools are able to carry them out properly. 

We can all reel off a list of proposals that could be beneficial to students and staff alike, but their eventual success depends very much on a number of factors.

Does your school have the money to ensure that the colleague responsible for spearheading an initiative and leading CPD has access to the expertise required to do it well? Ever heard of a colleague “encouraged” to present an idea that they don’t know enough about? For some schemes, that’s a waste of time. For others, like therapeutic interventions, it’s deeply troubling.

What works when, where and how

What about time? No one should have someone else’s brilliant idea foisted upon them in the lessons they’ve regained from exam classes if that goes above and beyond their directed time. 

This year has been particularly gruelling, but the marking load is generally lighter at this time of year. However, as a profession, we are time-poor in the other five half-terms, so are these few weeks enough? Will SLT protect the time needed to carry out the proposal effectively later in the year?

Longevity is another factor to consider. Even for those schools currently enjoying success with their initiatives, who’s to say it will last should the colleague responsible be promoted or even leave? Too many brilliant ideas have crumbled with no successor to take up the cause.

And finally, luck. Some fantastic initiatives simply never take root within a particular school culture. You just can’t tell, no matter how well they appear to be working elsewhere. When researching, we need to consider not just what appeared to work, but where and when and how. 

The other problem with new initiatives is that we only ever really hear about triumphs. As teachers, we’re great at letting our students know what went well and what could be even better - but, as schools, we’re not so clear. We rightly celebrate our successes, but things that don’t pan out so well tend to be left unmentioned. 

If we’re to make real progress, leaders need to be open about what wasn’t achieved and how we might improve that in future.

We need to listen to colleagues about what’s actually needed, what might work best and what staff can realistically deliver. Those left to ensure the implementation and continued running of these initiatives need to be part of the consultation. 

Expertise is essential. Having the time and support to do it right, equally so. Asking questions about how a new “solution” will work long term is sadly too frequently read as a lack of enthusiasm. 

But if we want to spend our time supporting our students and our colleagues in the most meaningful ways, we need to put a bit more thought into it, beyond the fact that it’s what everyone else appears to be doing. It really doesn’t matter if it worked there. We need to make sure it’s right for here.

Clare Owen is a secondary teacher in South London