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Linking CPD to Whole-School Impact: Moving Beyond Compliance

Liam Reece

Overview

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) should be one of the most powerful tools a school has to drive improvement. When staff grow, schools grow. But too often, CPD is treated as a compliance task rather than a strategic driver. Hours are logged, training is attended, and appraisal forms are filled in. Yet the link between professional development and meaningful, measurable change across the school can feel weak or even non-existent.

In today’s climate of high expectations, limited time, and tight budgets, schools cannot afford for CPD to sit on the margins. It needs to be embedded, purposeful, and aligned with school improvement priorities.

So how do we shift CPD from a standalone activity to something that truly moves the needle?

How SchooliP Supports This Approach

SchooliP provides a single platform that brings together CPD, performance management, and school improvement planning. It allows schools to link individual objectives directly to school development priorities, ensuring every staff member’s professional growth is contributing to the bigger picture.

With SchooliP, schools can:

This helps shift CPD from isolated activity to embedded strategy. It also means school leaders have a clear, real-time view of how staff development is driving whole-school progress.

The Gap Between CPD and School Priorities

In many schools, CPD is seen as an individual responsibility rather than a collective strategy. Teachers choose or are assigned courses, attend sessions, and may even implement new ideas in their classrooms. However, the impact of this learning often remains undocumented, unshared, and unaligned with wider school goals.

Common challenges in school-based CPD:

1. Lack of Alignment with Strategic Goals
Schools may spend time and resources developing staff, but if those efforts are not linked to the school's priorities, the return on investment is limited. For example, if a school has identified raising outcomes in reading as a key goal, but most CPD logged relates to generic wellbeing or unrelated technology, then the development is not moving the school forward in a focused way.

2. One-Size-Fits-All Training
Whole-school INSET sessions are necessary but not sufficient. Without differentiation, much of the content may not meet the specific needs of teachers in different phases, roles, or experience levels. As a result, even high-quality sessions can lose their value if they are not tailored.

3. The Forgotten Appraisal Cycle
Performance management and CPD should be closely linked, but in practice, they often drift apart. Appraisal objectives may be set at the start of the year, yet without regular follow-up or connection to real development activity, they become passive documents. The link between staff goals and school goals weakens over time.

4. Difficulty Measuring Impact
Schools frequently struggle to capture the impact of CPD. A course may be rated highly in feedback, but does it lead to a shift in practice? Does it improve student outcomes? These questions are difficult to answer without a structure for reflection, sharing, and evaluation.

5. Administrative Overload
Tracking CPD, objectives, and evidence often requires a patchwork of spreadsheets, documents, and emails. This creates duplication and consumes leadership time that could be better spent supporting teaching and learning.

What effective CPD looks like

For CPD to contribute meaningfully to whole-school improvement, it needs to be part of an integrated system. Effective CPD is:

When CPD is embedded in a school’s improvement culture, it stops being a tick-box exercise and becomes a tool for sustainable change.

Conclusion

Professional development is not just an investment in individuals; it is an investment in the future of the school. When CPD is aligned with strategic priorities, it supports a shared vision, fosters a culture of continual improvement, and drives collective progress.

To realise this potential, schools need more than good intentions. They need joined-up systems that bring together staff development, performance, and improvement planning into one cohesive process.

By making these connections, schools can ensure that every training session, coaching conversation, and development goal contributes to a larger purpose, not just personal growth, but meaningful, measurable change across the school.

IP Newsletter June 2025

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