Teacher development
Effective teaching starts with excellent teachers. We have been working with teachers for over 50 years to develop high impact teaching methods and professional development that improve learner outcomes and help to improve teacher retention.
We have a particular track record in improving literacy and numeracy outcomes through teacher development – evidence of which can be seen in our work in Rwanda and Brunei as well as in the key role we played in embedding England’s National Strategies from 1996 to 2005.
Smart and effective teacher development plays a core role in our large-scale school improvement programmes in Kenya and Rwanda. In Kenya, through our Girls’ Education Challenge work, our successful coaching model crucially harnesses existing talent within the system to providing a cost-effective – and effective – approach to teacher and leadership development. Equally, our Building Learning Foundations programme in Rwanda provides carefully designed self-study toolkits for teachers with video and audio on SD cards.
The teacher workforce
In the UK, we continue to work on behalf of the Department for Education to address the teacher retention issue as well as provide specialist CPD to teachers across all phases – all to ensure the best possible outcomes for learners. We are currently a Lead Provider for the Early Career Framework through our Early Career Professional Development Programme, which supports teachers in the first few years of their careers, as well as for the National Professional Qualifications and Behaviour Hubs Programme. Over the past five years, we have also been recruiting the brightest and best maths and physics students and supporting them to follow a route into teaching through our Future Teaching Scholars programme.. Equally, with a focus on targeting disadvantaged children, our Early Years Professional Development Programme delivers specialist CPD to early years practitioners to improve outcomes in language, literacy and numeracy with an emphasis on the improving school readiness of two-to-four-year-olds.
An established authority in ELT
Equally, since our inception in 1968, we have had a particular focus on teacher development in English language teaching (ELT). We recruit expert-English-speaking qualified teachers and we also work with governments to offer transformational training and improvement programmes to ensure effective capacity building for local English language teachers.
Brunei is our centre of excellence for ELT. We have been working in Brunei (as CfBT Brunei) since 1984 and have helped the Bruneian government to achieve exceptional results: of the seven top-ranking Asian nations and territories in the PISA 2012 rankings (Shanghai China, Hong Kong China, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Macau China) Bruneian students’ English language proficiency outperforms all but Singapore. Our current ELT emphasis on English as an international language, combined with our long history of partnership with educational ministries, provides an effective model for national-scale ELT improvement.
Teacher development in the Middle East
We have a history of working in the Middle East to provide high-quality professional development in English language teaching. Our work builds upon the existing skillsets of local teachers and school leaders in the teaching of English and subjects taught in the medium of English. We have worked extensively in Jordan and Lebanon to support teachers of Syrian refugees through the Alexandria Schools Trust.
Evidence-informed: randomised controlled trials
We support teachers to become research engaged to improve their practice and train teachers in randomised controlled trial (RCT) methodology to they can rigorously ‘test and learn’. Our training empowers teachers to design and test interventions for their classrooms – supported and quality assured by Education Development Trust – so they can deliver evidence of what works in their context.