This years’ new intake of trainee teachers is by now, fully immersed in the world of teaching. It can be a daunting start with so much to take in and learn about, and ensuring that they have the right support to succeed is of course paramount but sometimes easier said than done. It is arguably more important than ever before to nurture trainee teachers and help to secure them within their teaching career.

There are of course a number of standards and processes in place to help support all teaching staff including trainees such as: 

• Professional Development Standards for Teachers
• Teachers’ Standards
• Appraisal processes

Ensuring that trainee teachers understand any standards and processes required of them, is of course vital. However, when it comes to monitoring them not only is a management and often a buddy-style system important to support them, so too is providing them with the opportunity to be involved in managing their own performance.

Empowering trainees with their own performance and development could be seen as a risky strategy but in all fairness, empowerment more often than not enables people to succeed. Having worked within education for years and discussed this many a time with senior leaders within colleges and schools, they are all inclined to agree.

Monitoring trainee teachers is (as you will know), all about helping them to harness their potential. Empowering and enabling them to manage and review all of the following can have a hugely positive effect:

• Their objectives
• Their progress
• Their achievements
• Their own CPD

From our own experience with trainee’s and from that as mentioned before which other educational providers have shared, trainees are quick to embrace their own development and to all intensive purposes, thrive on it.

CollegeiP is a highly configurable, performance review system which empowers all staff including trainee teachers, and makes it easy to continually monitor trainee teachers. The online solution puts staff at the forefront of their own development and the communication tools make it easy for a manager to quickly answer questions, offer advice, and intervene. All online communications can be reviewed, removing the potential for repeat questions which let’s be honest is sometimes a necessity when you’re training but can be time consuming for managers. 

In addition, all objectives can be viewed, tracked and assessed regularly, helping to identify areas where further support might be required. The solution also encourages collaboration between staff and the sharing of best practice which is valuable to all staff but can be particularly useful when supporting trainee teachers.