Continued Professional Development
The Abbey School believes that it is our responsibility to give our staff every opportunity to develop as practitioners and provides strong support for our staff linked to their career progression.
Our current provision includes:
The Improving Teacher Programme (ITP) & The Outstanding Teacher Programme (OTP)
The school has 4 Olevi accredited Outstanding Training Facilitators, which allows us to deliver these certificated 6-day Teaching & Learning related courses which focus on consolidating 'Good' practice and moving from 'Good' to 'Outstanding'. These courses are also available to external candidates and have a proven track record for improving classroom practice.
The Teaching and Learning Development Programme
This is a hybrid programme that The Abbey School has developed, containing elements of both the ITP & OTP. This course is led by our Outstanding Facilitators and runs over 6 twilight sessions. The initial delivery of the course in 2015/16 was extremely well received by both our internal and external candidates.
Thursday CPD
Our innovative curriculum model reflects the importance that we place on staff development. Our pupils finish school early on a Thursday afternoon allowing our staff to experience over 2 hours of targeted training linked to their own needs and those relevant to the School Improvement Plan. This training is extremely flexible, ranging from the use of key-note speakers to focused small group work. It also allows some valuable department development time.
Internal Department CPD
As a school, we recognise the high quality of natural resources that we already have and integrate these skills into our extensive programme. We offer remuneration for our staff's delivery areas of expertise to colleagues, promoting consistency and excellence.
Reflective Practice Programme (RRP)
As a school, we have used Coaching / Mentoring as a vital development tool for the last 5 years. Not only do we use this strategically to support individual members of staff where appropriate, but we also use Coaching / Mentoring in a whole school initiative called the RPP. This allows staff to work in non-hierarchical triads over the course of an academic year, focusing on a bespoke rationale linked to both personal and school development. The school has invested CPD time in this programme to make sure that the work produced has a positive impact on whole school effectiveness. There is also a close link between our Coaching / Mentoring and Monitoring and Evaluation of Teaching and Learning, using signposting as a means to inform the creation of rationales and groupings.