Creative Education is proud to be delivering a national Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme, made possible by funding from the Department for Education, with one goal at its heart: helping more young people succeed in English across Further Education.
We know that behind every qualification is a real young person building the skills they need for life and work. And behind every classroom is a teacher doing everything they can to make that happen. This programme is for them.
English attainment remains one of the most important priorities in post-16 education — and for good reason. For many young people, gaining these qualifications opens the door to Level 3 study, apprenticeships, and the careers they’re working towards. They’re also central to the Department for Education’s Condition of Funding policy, making strong provision not just a moral imperative, but a practical one.
Creative Education’s CPD programme has been built around a simple belief: that when teachers are well-supported, learners thrive. It’s designed to improve teaching quality, deepen learner engagement, and help FE settings deliver English provision that genuinely makes a difference — consistently, and with confidence.
This isn’t a generic CPD offer. It’s been developed specifically for Further Education practitioners, and it reflects what teaching resit cohorts and Functional Skills learners actually looks like day to day — the challenges, the complexities, and the real rewards when something clicks.
The programme takes a blended professional development approach, with a focus on:
- Practical strategies to improve engagement in GCSE resit groups
- Diagnostic assessment and responsive teaching that meets learners where they are
- Embedding literacy meaningfully across vocational and academic programmes
- Coaching, mentoring and reflective practice to help teachers grow
- Leadership development that supports lasting improvement in teaching quality
- Evidence-informed pedagogy that works in real FE classrooms
What makes this programme different is its reach. It’s not just for classroom teachers — it extends to learning support staff, curriculum leaders, and senior managers too. Because improving English outcomes isn’t the responsibility of one person; it takes a whole college pulling in the same direction.
Since launch, FE providers have been getting stuck in — weaving CPD into their staff development cycles and curriculum planning, rather than treating it as a box to tick. The early signs are encouraging: practitioners are feeling more confident, teaching is becoming more consistent, and teams are developing shared approaches to delivering English that actually hold up across departments.
None of this happens in isolation. The programme sits firmly within the wider priorities set by the Department for Education, and supports the long-standing English Condition of Funding requirement that FE providers know well. But more than policy alignment, it’s about something bigger — raising attainment at Level 2, improving progression rates, and making sure that every young person in FE has access to high-quality English teaching, wherever they are and whoever is in front of them.
Everything Creative Education does is grounded in evidence-informed practice and genuine sector expertise — but the real test is always what happens back in the classroom. That’s why the focus isn’t on professional learning for its own sake, but on the kind that translates into real, visible improvements: in teaching practice, in learner confidence, and ultimately in outcomes.
This isn’t a programme that gets delivered and then moves on. As the year progresses through 2026 and into 2027, Creative Education will keep listening — to practitioners, to providers, and to the sector — refining and evolving the CPD offer so that it stays genuinely useful and responsive to what’s actually needed on the ground.
At its heart, this programme represents something meaningful: a serious, sustained investment in the people who teach English in FE every day. The teachers who take on the hardest cohorts, who find new ways to reach students who’ve struggled before, and who keep showing up because they believe those students can get there. Supporting them — properly, practically, and for the long term — is how we raise the quality of English education across the sector, one classroom at a time.