Research and surveys tell us that high quality instruction is one of the most important influences on student outcomes. This course is based on research on how effective instruction works.  

Every student deserves a chance to shine. Our “Understanding Special Needs in Schools” course is designed to give you the simple, practical tools you need to support students with extra needs. Through easy-to-follow sessions, you'll learn how to turn everyday challenges into opportunities for growth—both for you and the children you work with.

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Teachers can feel nervous about providing their pupils with mental health support. They can feel under-qualified, inexperienced and lack confidence. The result can be that some pupils’ needs are ignored. But helping our pupils with their mental health doesn’t have to be so hard. This course offers practical ways for leaders to give their school community care and support when they need it most. 

This is a course for anyone new to ADHD 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 tendencies 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.

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. The expectations around knowledge and understanding is shifting from training being ‘given’ to staff, to TA’s sharing responsibility to ensure their own knowledge is up to date. With support from the school TA’s should be looking to gain qualifications or experiences and from this, be able to demonstrate theses expertise in their role.  Here we explore how TA’s may do this, where to look and what may be good routes to explore. 

This is a recording of a past webinar, Pooky explore 5 simple ideas for engaging with parents and carers whose personal experiences of schools mean that they are fearful or untrusting of school and are less likely to engage. There is no quick win, but these simple ideas which don't need to cost anything to implement have worked well in many schools.”

This is a playback of a past live webinar.  How can you hit the ground running in the first year – and especially when that first year coincides with a global pandemic? During this one hour webinar you’ll explore a range of tried and tested strategies for having an early impact in the role as well as exploring some common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

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. The expectations around how teaching assistants present themselves can often be based on a set of ‘unwritten rules’ that are deduced through careful watching and mirroring. It is therefore hard to know when you may have ‘crossed the line’ as without a guide to professional conduct how do you know? Here we look at the professional standards set out around the area and specifically talk about what these may look like in a real life/school context. 

The course is for all vocational teachers from any subject as well as managers and teachers of English who are interested in developing  approaches to help make sure that the hard work put into  embedding English and maths has  a major impact on learners.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a very serious form of abuse that affects women and girls across the globe and within the United Kingdom. This course will equip you with the knowledge, skills and confidence to identify and seek help for women and girls that may have been a victim of FGM, or are at risk of undergoing FGM. This is an introductory course for all staff and volunteers working directly with children in schools.

This is a course for anyone new to Dyspraxia 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 tendencies 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.

In this course, Matt Bromley turns his attention to the pastoral role that teachers fulfil in school. He shares his advice on being an effective form tutor and talks about what NQTs need to know about the SEND Code of Practice. He then walks you through the three waves of intervention and support that tend to work best for disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND. Matt also summarises your legal duties and tells you what you need to know about child protection. As well as being useful for individual CPD for new teachers, this course could form the basis of coaching and mentoring activity in schools.

Do you want to provide a high-quality mental health offer for your primary-aged pupils? Perhaps you’re doing bits and pieces of mental health but want to pull it together into a more cohesive product? This course will give you practical advice about building your whole school offer from policy to simple classroom strategies and techniques to support mental health.  

This is a course for anyone new to Speech, Language and Communication Needs and wanting to find out more about them. It aims to give you the basics so that you can start to identify pupils who may be displaying tendencies 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.

The biggest jump from TA to HLTA for most is the introduction of ‘Professional Skills’, that is the expectations around planning, teaching and learning, monitoring and assessment. Whereas TA’s are very much directed by teachers, stepping up to working with and contributing to these areas can be daunting. Here we take this section of the professional standards for HLTA’s and look at which approaches, theories and structure can help guide you in making the best decisions when planning. This course is therefore aimed at TA’s aspiring to become HLTA’s, or HLTA’s wishing to develop their knowledge in this area.

This course gives you 9 ‘Make it’ practical starting points in assembling successful assemblies. It complements Pooky’s ‘You Can: Give Great Assemblies’ course by focussing upon tried and tested content to support you in finding these valuable school-community gatherings less daunting for you as a leader. As we move through a global pandemic, the need for meaningful assemblies has never been greater. 

This course considers why and how we can work to improve our engagement with parents and carers.  We start by considering why our relationship with parents and carers matters and explore the importance of having clear aims and goals for our work with families.  During the course, we consider how to overcome common obstacles and explore a range of simple tried and tested strategies for boosting not only the quantity of engagements between school and home but boosting the quality also. This course has been developed by Dr Pooky Knightsmith and draws on her extensive work as a coach to school leaders.  Engagement with parents and carers is an area for improvement for many of the leaders she has coached, and the ideas that have worked well are distilled here.

In this course, which is the first of three courses on the subject of securing a SLT position, Matt Bromley talks about finding the right role for you and about how to articulate your suitability for that role.  He also explores four qualities of effective school leaders and explains how you can set out your leadership vision. As well as being useful for individual CPD, this course could form the basis of in-school 121 coaching for prospective members of SLT. This course has been developed by Matt Bromley who has over twenty years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as headteacher, principal and MAT 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 Become a School Leader, How to Lead, and School & College Curriculum Design.

This course is essential for anyone working or volunteering in a school. It will equip you with the skills to understand the risks posed by radicalisation and extremism, what to look out for in your context and how to respond to concerns. The course will also ensure that you understand the legal duties placed on professionals in relation to radicalisation and extremism and give you the confidence to respond appropriately to incidents in your setting.