A focus on autistic masking. What is it? How does it present? How can you identify it? Why is supporting a child to un-mask so vital to well-being and enabling access to education? The content of this course will provide the skills needed to make a child who masks feel safe, as well as considering how the whole school ethos can celebrate difference.

There are a whole series of issues that we can expect to see in our pupils in the coming months.  To help you spot the signs and take appropriate action, I’ve outlined a range of potential concerns, when to worry and suggested next steps.  

In this course, Matt Bromley explains the differences between the 2019 EIF and its predecessor, the Common Inspection Framework (CIF), and why the inspection regime has changed. Matt provides an overview of the 2019 framework and the schools inspection handbook and explains the methodology of inspection. He also dedicates a module to each of the four key judgments: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management. As well as being useful for individual CPD for school leaders, this course could form the basis of SLT discussions or whole-school training. This course has been developed by Matt Bromley who has over twenty years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a headteacher and a director of education. He is now a school improvement advisor, teacher-trainer and public speaker. He regularly speaks at national and international conferences, and he is a regular contributor to a number of education magazines including TES and SecEd. He is the author of a number of books on education including How to Learn and School & College Curriculum Design.

Supply teaching, NQTs, trainees, cover supervisors, Covid19 lockdown rotas and ‘oh, Sue’s away – can you just cover her year 9s period 4?’…throughout our teaching careers there are many times that we will be required to cover classes and teach lessons that we may have had little or no time to prepare for. This course gives you an overview and practical solutions to establishing relationships with pupils when you might only have 47 mins with 34 of them.

The introduction of statutory health education in September 2020 is a watershed moment; but the hard work has only just begun.  Now we need to ensure we get it right!  This course will help you to fully engage with the process of developing and delivering a health education curriculum that meets the needs of your learners, staff and families.  Whilst it’s impossible to give you all the answers, this course will make sure that you’re asking the right people the right questions and give you some clear direction and starting points to help you get Health Education right in your school. The course has been developed and delivered by Dr Pooky Knightsmith who is an advisor to the PSHE Association and the Department for Education and who has been involved in the development and delivery of PSHE and Health Education in a wide range of schools and local authorities.  This course was inspired by a keynote presentation Pooky originally delivered to colleagues at a Headteacher Update conference which Pooky chaired.

During this course, Pooky summarises a simple, evidence-based approach to promoting resilience in the face of adversity.  You’ll learn about the evidence underpinning the approach and how the 4Ps of parents, peers, problem-solving and passion can be used as a framework for promoting resilience in the children in your care using a very simple action planning template which focuses on both risk and protective factors. This course has been developed by Dr Pooky Knightsmith, an internationally recognised mental health expert and author. The content is based on a paper commissioned by Health Education England and Young Minds as part of the ‘Addressing Adversity’ project.  Pooky has run workshops on the 4Ps approach across the UK and internationally and this simple, evidence based approach has provided a practical focus colleagues from across a wide range of settings.

This is a course for anyone who is working with pupils with autistic tendencies or diagnosis. Following on from our ‘Spot and Support Autism’, we take a more in depth look at how being on the Autistic Spectrum can affect attainment in school. We will unpick the triad of impairment; the 3 core areas that help define ASC and develop our understanding of how a child may be operating within these. From here we can unpick the areas of the English curriculum which present the most challenges. Most importantly we’ll look at what practically we can do to support our pupils navigate what can often be a very difficult, confusing and unfulfilling journey. 

In this course, Matt Bromley defines metacognition and self-regulation and explains what it looks like in the classroom.  He also walks you through six practical teaching strategies you could adopt in the classroom to help teach, model and promote your students’ metacognition and self-regulation skills. As well as being useful for individual CPD, this course could also form the basis of group discussions or training in-school, perhaps as part of a teacher learning community or lesson study project.

This is a playback of a past live webinar. During this webinar, Pooky explored some simple steps to take us a little closer to meeting the mental health needs of every member of our school or college community.

This is a great course for all teaching assistants, especially those new to the role, or new to a school and helpful for supporting and training colleagues. With the majority of teaching assistants expected to lead an intervention at some point during the week, it is often the case that no formal training has been given. Here we take a step by step walk through the key areas that need to be considered in order to run a successful intervention and give you the confidence to adapt and amend plans for the benefit of your pupils.

In this course, Matt Bromley shares his tips for managing your time and working with other adults in school. Matt looks at the types of people you’ll need to work with in your new school including your headteacher and subject leader. He then homes in on how to forge an effective working relationship with your teaching assistant (TA). Matt then turns his attention to time management, offering some practical tips to ensure that you maintain a healthy work life balance and don’t burn out. Finally, he shares some tips for making a success of lesson planning. As well as being useful for individual CPD for new teachers, this course could form the basis of coaching and mentoring activity in schools.

This is a course for anyone new to Autism and wanting to find out more about it. It aims to give you the basics so that you can start to identify pupils who may be displaying traits and work with those pupils to support their needs. We’ll therefore give you advice and simple ideas you can put into practice straight away and approaches to adapt and trial. It may be that the pupil needs further support so we’ll talk about what other avenues you may want to pursue. Great for teachers new to the profession, support staff or anyone wanting to check their understanding and support pupils to have the best possible outcomes.

Wellbeing action plans are an evidence-based approach to promoting wellbeing.  They can be used by children or adults and give a clear, simple framework for staying well. This course gives you an overview of the different elements of a wellbeing action plan and some clear pointers for developing an effective plan.  The framework provided can help to clarify your thoughts and actions whether it’s your own wellbeing that you’re looking to promote or if you’re supporting a pupil or colleague.  The process of writing the plan is every bit as important as actually implementing it and this is especially true when it comes to planning ahead for the holidays with more vulnerable pupils. This course is suitable for anyone interested in developing a wellbeing action plan for themselves or in supporting a child or adult to write one. The course has been developed and delivered by Dr Pooky Knightsmith, a mental health expert who has supported hundreds of adults and children to develop wellbeing action plans through workshops and also through her book “The Mentally Health Schools Workbook” which has an entire chapter dedicated to supporting staff to develop wellbeing action plans.

In this course you will learn about the characteristics of Pathological Demand Avoidance - PDA, a profile of the autism spectrum. Children who present as demand avoidant will also have high levels of anxiety, making everyday tasks seem overwhelming to them and result in refusing, withdrawing or shutting down to avoid doing things.  This can be very challenging in a school environment and can often be overlooked or misinterpreted. We will look at all the ways that a child may present with PDA and how to spot the triggers alongside strategies to help support these children. While autism approaches may be helpful for addressing sensory issues we will also look at the flexible and collaborative approaches that are needed for the child who is demand avoidant.  This course will help you to learn new creative strategies and knowledge to support the child in school as well as enabling the child to feel understood and supported through their time in education. This course is for anyone who would like to gain greater knowledge of PDA and be better equipped to support the child in feeling able to engage with their environment and learning.

When a friend, colleague or member of your community is bereaved, it can be difficult to know what to say or do.  In this course, I walk through some simple ideas to give you confidence in providing the right kind and amount of support to an adult who is grieving.

This course provides an accessible introduction to anxiety and provides useful pointers for any adult supporting a child with anxiety.  Common misunderstandings and misconceptions are addressed, we consider some potential pitfalls to avoid and we explore a range of simple, practical ideas for supporting anxious children.

Life can be pretty challenging for autistic children as they try to fit within a world that doesn’t always make sense to them on terms that don’t quite work for them.  Sometimes, anxiety, anger or sheer exhaustion can bubble over and result in challenging behaviour which is distressing both for the child and the adults supporting them.  There is a lot that we can do to change the environment rather than the child, but this course focuses in on how we can support autistic children to recognise and regulate how they’re feeling, to give them the best chance of managing alongside their peers because maybe the whole world needs to change, but until that happens, these simple ideas can change how the world feels for the child you’re supporting.

This course is suitable for any adult working with or caring for an autistic child or, to be honest, any child.  As with so much of the work we do for children special needs, these ideas are widely applicable and will do good (and certainly no harm) for any child but will do especial good with children who are (or might be) autistic.

When a child experiences the death of a loved one, the adults around them play a hugely important role both in supporting in the immediate aftermath and also of helping to support and guide the child towards the future.  This course explores what children most need from adults at such a difficult time and shares practical ideas for how we can step up and fulfil such an important role with confidence.