Will the Minister outline how the £9 million for teachers’ training for the new curriculum in this financial year been spent, including how many teachers has been trained, what was the content of the training, and how has it prepared them and their schools for the planned curriculum changes?
Enhanced funding to support the National Approach for Professional Learning (NAPL) awarded through a regional consortia grant during 2018-19 has allowed sufficient flexibly for schools to use the funding to work together to meet their own circumstances. Examples of how the funding could be used included (but not limited to):
· releasing and covering staff to be involved in collaborative professional learning planning – across schools, clusters and wider networks.
· incentivising and rewarding staff to investigate the implications of the new curriculum for their own practice - funded release for critical professional enquiry.
· creating roles and posts to support colleagues, departments and whole schools through critical enquiry, change management and schools as learning organisations (SLO) approaches.
· development of the role of school or cluster level professional learning coaches – this is one of the key findings from HEI research informing the wider evidence base for the national approach and an area in which we would encourage continued investment.
Details of the return on this investment in relation to the number of practitioners trained will be collated in partnership with regional consortia, as administrators of the funding. In addition, as this investment will continue next year, with a further £15 million made available during 2019-20 through local authority grant funding, we will continue to monitor the impact of this approach to support early engagement with the new curriculum.