Our aim is to empower all staff to be the best they can be by offering career stage-appropriate, continuous training and development opportunities.
CPD (Continuing Professional Development) is a planned, continuous process whereby staff at all levels develop their personal and professional attributes, to improve their knowledge, skills and practice. This vision for CPD will lead to the empowerment of all staff and the continual drive to improve the learning environment will enable our students to be the best they can be.
This academy is fiercely committed to developing its staff to secure outstanding outcomes for its students. We believe that staff who are able to become absolute masters at their craft are best able to serve our young people. For this reason, we offer a wide range of professional development opportunities at all levels.
Career Aspirations
The academy’s suite of CPD opportunities gives due consideration to the career aspirations of colleagues. This approach enables effective succession planning and effectively prepares individuals to be in control of their career path.
Such preparation will encourage colleagues to maximise impact in their current roles and contribute significantly to the whole academy improvement.
Listening to staff is important to us, so on joining the academy and throughout your career journey with us, you will be invited to share your views through a career aspirations form.
CPD at Amington
We offer a wide range of pathways for both teaching and support staff. Our CPD opportunity trees (available below) indicate the full range of opportunities. A brief overview of our offer can be found below:
Professional development at the Academy includes:
- New staff induction programme
- Early Careers Teaching programme
- Lead Practitioner Programme
- National Professional Qualifications.
- Coaching for improvement
- Subject-specific exam board training
- Ambition Institute – Leadership development programme
- Access to National College Training/webinars
- Regular Staff Training
CPD can include, as well as external courses, support and/or time to develop a professional interest; retirement planning seminars; opportunities to visit other schools to look at best practice; to work shadow or to undertake, for example, an evaluation of a department’s work. It can also include opportunities to take on additional responsibilities or specific projects in this academy. These and other options will be considered on an individual basis.
We have a strong focus on lesson observation or observation of practice for other professionals as a development opportunity. We believe that feedback should be developmental, not judgemental and that we can all improve our teaching and achieve mastery through reflection and feedback, using coaching conversations as the tool to achieve this.
We also have a number of consultants supporting support the delivery of subject-specific CPD within departments.
Further information
Information on requests for CPD along with our CPD evaluation procedure can be found in the document below. For additional details, please speak with your line manager.