Staff Development

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) at Silverwood

At Silverwood School we are recognise the overarching importance of high quality and sustained CPD and its impact on meeting pupil needs, improving outcomes and supporting teachers and TAs by equipping them with the skills and knowledge that they need. The School Development Plan and our 5 Year Strategic Plan are key driving factors. The school offers development opportunities for school teachers and support staff, from induction through to early leadership training. These include:
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• A full package of statutory training, including Safeguarding, Health and Safety and Compliance.
• A weekly professional learning programme during directed time, which includes access to coaching and mentoring at all levels.
• Regular meetings with line managers to discuss training needs and professional ambitions. Staff can also engage in a personalised discussion with their line managers.
• A range of solution focused professional surgeries e.g. behaviour, speech and language, subject-specific
• A comprehensive 5 day INSET day training package, including all statutory training e.g. Prevent, Safeguarding, Medical
• Access to nationally recognised, certificated qualifications.
• Opportunities to engage with colleagues from across the school, Wiltshire and beyond.
• Access to external specialised support e.g. education psychologists
• Team Teach and de-escalation training
• Links with other schools, both special and mainstream have widened our opportunities for school to school visits and sharing best practice. We also offer support and training through our SEND Consultancy Service (more information can be found on the Silverwood SEN support and Training page) and in partnership with the Swindon and Wiltshire Teaching School Hub. As part of our vision to improve the lives of young people with special educational needs, our outreach service actively develops expertise about specialist teaching in a multitude of settings in Wiltshire and beyond which is key to our support of Wiltshire’s System of Excellence.  

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Silverwood School’s Vision is ‘Building Community, Inspiring Learning’. We aim to develop a diverse, highly skilled and motivated workforce that is forward thinking and inspirational; working together for the benefit of our pupils. We understand that everyone in the Silverwood School Community is an individual with different strengths, skills and interests. Consequently, we value all roles and career pathways, seeing every role as contributing to a child's development and success. As such we have created a bespoke career stage offer to show staff some of the career paths available to them within Silverwood. Full details of our comprehensive offer can be accessed in the Silverwood School CPD offer document.

Effective leaders are integral to positive school improvement. Research shows that school leaders can drive improvement through creating the culture, structures and systems that increase the quality of teaching and learning (Leithwood et al., 2019). There are opportunities for research and development in collaboration with other schools and organisations, such as through Challenge Partners. Challenge Partners promotes the sharing of excellent practice, facilitating peer reviews and the running of programmes grounded in evidence of what works, so that our pupils can benefit from the combined wisdom of the system. This enables us to reflect on and develop teaching and learning approaches in school, linking our practice to research. In addition, all senior leaders are enrolled on a programme of leadership development ‘Liberating Leadership’ and a number of senior leaders have a professional coach. 

Some staff will choose to extend their skills with the support of a professional coach or through enrolling in academic qualifications which contain a research element, for example, undergraduate degrees, NPQs, routes into teaching and Masters’ degrees.

The impact of our CPD is analysed through Silverwood School’s monitoring and evaluation process. This effectively measures the quality of provision and pupils’ outcomes, ensures regular and accurate feedback through mentoring and coaching and supports teacher appraisal. Feedback is also sought through testimonials and response questionnaires.
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Silverwood School CPD Offer – The Learning Community

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Bespoke career stage offer in addition to your universal offer

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