Each month, Inspiration TSH engages with its community by sharing a newsletter – full of educational chat, tips for teachers and articles. It is important that we communicate with the schools who engage with our hub and share the best educational knowledge we can. In this article, our Staff Development Coordinator outlines the new National Professional Qualification (NPQ) courses.
We were delighted to welcome participants from our first cohort of the new and reformed NPQ programmes to have their conference days (mostly) face-to-face in our newly refurbished Inspiration Teaching School Hub in Norwich. We were lucky enough to be joined by participants from across East Anglia; Norfolk, Suffolk and as far as Essex!
Everyone brought a wealth of enthusiasm, ideas and different perspectives on what it means to lead in the areas they are focussing on. When we discussed participants’ motivations for taking an NPQ there was a common thread across all programmes of wanting to excel as leaders and specialists to benefit the children their schools serve; a purpose which is shared by Inspiration Teaching School Hub and our partner Ambition Institute.
We can see that in addition to their online learning, participants have been using the buddy system to support each other, hold each other accountable and share ideas. The teamwork continued at the first community session, which provided a chance for the participants to start to use learning from the course and their own experiences to help each other respond to real-life issues encountered in school settings.
Choosing how to respond to issues using knowledge from a strong evidence base forms an integral part of these courses. The old-style NPQs were assessed on a two-term project and write up, which increased participants’ workloads and focussed on school-wide change in one area. The new and reformed NPQs use a different approach, looking to improve the way in which participants look at and take action on problems they encounter in their individual context. This change of approach is reflected in the method of assessment, which is now a 1500 word open book essay, to be completed within an 8 day window – to fit around their commitments!
In February the first clinics will be running, facilitated by a range of experienced senior and executive-level leaders. Clinics are half-termly two-hour online group sessions, and are a chance to examine case studies, discuss and reflect on participants’ learning in each module. We look forward to hearing how our participants find these, especially after the excellent feedback we received on our communications and support, online system and conference days. Our experience of the new NPQ programmes so far have been great and we can’t wait to take on a new cohort in September 2022.
If you would like some more information on any of our offers, or if you would like to receive our regular communications, please email [email protected] or phone 01603 733446.