What Actually Works in Teacher Development

£1 billion a year. That is how much England spends on teacher professional development. A billion. So I asked school leaders what actually happens after outside training comes in.

A hundred people voted and only one percent, that's one person, said it led to lasting change. Today we're talking about why professional development keeps missing the mark and what you can do about it. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leading. Welcome to Education Leaders The Chat, topping international podcasts for leaders in schools around the world.

I'm an author and an organisational coach and in this show I bring you practical ideas and honest conversations to help you lead with confidence and clarity. This episode is supported by teaching walkthroughs and the International curriculum association. Stay tuned. So a few weeks ago I posted a poll on LinkedIn.

If we're not connected there by the way, send me a request. It'd be lovely to see you there. When I was there I asked a dead simple question. When an outside trainer comes into your school to deliver a session, what's the usual outcome? Now about a hundred people voted and and the

results were pretty brutal but honestly not surprising at all. 57% said engaging but nothing happens. 30% said short-lived impact and 11% said it was a total waste of time from the start. So how about lasting change in practice? Well one percent, one single person.

Now I know it was a super small sample, it's obviously a LinkedIn poll, this is not a peer reviewed study but the pattern, that pattern is real, it got a lot of attention actually and some great comments. So Kamma Milan, she left a comment pointing me to a brand new report from the Teacher Development Trust called Teacher Development the CPD Landscape in 2025 and it basically confirms everything this poll was showing but on a serious scale because they interviewed over a thousand teachers and leaders across England. Drew Perkins who was on the podcast before from Thought Stretchers, he also jumped in with a question that really stuck with me actually. He said even when there is lasting change in practice does that lasting change fade when the leadership responsible for it leaves or when the provider leaves which is a really good question, I want to come back to that. So today I want to walk you through this report

because I think it's fascinating what it might mean for you as a leader wherever you are in the world because even though this data is from England I promise you the patterns are the same in international schools, I see it constantly in my coaching work. So let's start with the money because I think these numbers are staggering so the Teacher Development Trust they estimate that around one billion pounds is spent on CPD for teachers and school leaders in England every year and these include things like government programs like the early career framework and the national professional qualifications, it includes those training day costs, school budgets for external training, all that stuff all totaling around a billion pounds and yet in their study nearly four in ten respondents said that CPD hadn't clearly improved their ability to do their job. It was 39% actually and think about that a second billions going in and four in ten saying it didn't make a difference. Now it was Carmen's comment that flagged two stats from the report that really were important here as well. She said that 26% of teachers felt their PD was directly

applicable to their role and only 23% felt that professional learning needs were effectively identified by their leadership. Now I want to have a look at those numbers in the report and I want to be precise here because I think accuracy matters. Those figures 26 and 23 are all respondents, teachers and leaders combined but if you look at teachers only it's worse. Only 20% of teachers said CPD was directly applicable to their role and only 16% said that their needs were being effectively identified by their leaders. Yikes.

So Carmen was right right about the direction at least the picture is bleak but the teacher specific data is really even more concerning. Meanwhile nearly one in five teachers spent less than a single day on formal CPD all year. 18% and those ones that did engage 70% of them did it internally within their own school led by colleagues and look gosh there's nothing wrong with internal CPD when done well. I think there's a lot to be gained from that. In

my book we talk a lot about internally led programs. It can be contextual, it can be collaborative, it can be really cost-effective but I do think the report raises a fair question do the people delivering it have the time the training and support to do it properly? After all PD is a specific skill set right and if that person is already overloaded with their teaching responsibilities which they probably are you've got a sealing problem. So here's something that the report flag that I think really matters by the way you can get this report online it's free to download I'll post a link in the show notes as well but I think this really matters if you're in a leadership position. There is a big gap between what leaders

think is happening with PD and what teachers are actually experiencing. This is fascinating. So senior leaders were consistently more positive about CPD's impact. 71% of leaders said it was improving pedagogical skills and yet only 57% of teachers agreed. So leaders they thought

that PD was enhancing pupil outcomes and teachers felt less. Classroom management was the same, PD leaders thought it was helping more, teachers felt less. And I think one of the starkest ones was when asked whether teachers PD needs were being effectively identified 33% of leaders said yes and only 16% of leaders agreed. There's a big gap on a fundamental question. What it's showing

is that there's many leaders here that think they're doing a good job of understanding what their staff needs and teachers overwhelmingly disagree. So if you're a head or a deputy or a PD leader looking at your CPD programme and thinking this is going really well then there's a decent chance that your teachers are not actually feeling the same way and it's not a criticism it's a blind spot. Leaders naturally have more visibility of the intent behind the PD right but teachers they don't they experience the delivery and clearly those two things are not matching up in a lot of schools. I think it connects back to Drew's question too when he asked about whether lasting change fades when the leadership or the provider leaves and the report basically says yes it does because the follow-up isn't there. Only 15% said that there was

effective ongoing support for their PD activities. So even when something lands in the room there's no system to keep it alive. Quick one before we continue I am really excited to be partnering with the International Quicklum Association on the International Leaders Conference 2026. If you're serious about growing as a leader this is the one event you need in your calendar this year. We have got some of the biggest speakers in education coming together for this and because

we know our audience is literally all over the world we're running it twice across different time zones so wherever you are you can be there live. It's the 7th and 8th of May. Head to internationalleadersconference.com or grab the link in the show notes. Leaders tell me all the time

that they struggle to find a practical way to get evidence-informed practice into every classroom and that's where teaching walkthroughs come in. They transform the most effective teaching techniques into five-step visual guides that are actually easy to follow. And what happens when your team use them? Well enthusiasm spreads, teachers improve their craft and they genuinely love using them and I do too. That's why I'm proud to be a consultant for teaching walkthroughs.

You can find out more at walkthroughs.co.uk or using the links in the show notes. So that's a doom and gloom right? So what actually does work? Because this report

isn't all doom and gloom. It gives some actually genuinely useful data on what types of PD people found really useful. So for formal PD the top three were coaching 74%, conferences and seminars at 72% and peer observation at 70% and those who did these things were the most likely to say that their overall CPD had improved their ability to do their job. For informal CPD the top ones were education related podcasts. Hooray! Which is good. 76% I'm so glad and you're listening

right now so hopefully you're taking value from this. Blogs came in 74% and reading professional publications or research 69% but here's a catch and it is a big one. The stuff that works best is the stuff schools use the least. Coaching was the least used form of formal CPD. Only 22%

of teachers had access to it, mentoring 29%, peer observation 30%. Schools are defaulting to workshops and online modules because they're easier to timetable, they're cheaper to run but the evidence is saying that those formats are not the ones that move the needles the most. When teachers described PD that actually made a difference they talked about being really relevant to their practice, really tailored to their context, collaborative, reflective and when it didn't work well they said things like it wasn't relevant. There was no follow-up, no agency, it felt like a tick box. There was one teacher said this in the survey, I quote them, they said

it was just something we had to do. There was no discussion afterwards or sense that it mattered and another said listen to this, after 20 years in the classroom I find a lot of CPD is pitched to early career teachers or focuses on the basics and I think this is a problem right with blanket PD, it doesn't meet anyone where they are and if the people feel like it's been done to them rather than for them, what do they do? They switch off, kind of rightly so. Now there's one more piece on this I want to pull out because I think it really matters a lot.

The report also asked about retention, teacher retention and 32% of respondents said that they were likely to leave the profession within three years. My god, 32% and those that were planning to leave, half of them said that PD had limited on no impact on their ability to do their role. But there's hope I think here because when asked what would make them more likely to stay, 70%, two-thirds said that CPD that directly addresses their workload and well-being would help. 68% said that PD that was personalised and aligned to their needs would help. Even teachers in the report that said they were already planning to leave

said better PD would influence their decision. So professional development therefore it's not just about using it as a lever to improve practice, it is genuinely a retention strategy but only if it's the right kind, only if it's the right kind. Generic PD, one size fits all, it's not keeping anyone in our profession right but personalised, relevant, collaborative types of development that is different. So let me bring this back to you then so you might be leading anywhere around the world. Here's what I'd be taking from this. One, stop defaulting to one-off training days.

Doesn't mean it's not useful but as the default, not so much. So my poll on this, the research base, they all pointed in the same direction that isolated sessions, they don't change practice and they might feel productive on the day but 57% of people in my poll told you exactly what happens next, nothing. And two, you need to think about closing the perception gap. So ask your teachers honestly whether their CPD is meeting their needs and ideally here, not through a survey a real conversation because a lot of leaders consistently overestimate how well things are going, that was in the report. So you might think your PD is solid, your teachers might be sitting

through it counting down the minutes, talk to them. Three, try to think about investing in formats that we know work even though they're a bit harder to organize. How could you bring in coaching or peer observation or collaborative inquiries? They do take a lot more time to set up than looking in a speaker for an inset day, for example, but the evidence is clear that they move the needles better. Four, can you build internal capacity so that when people leave, those systems

stay, right? This is what I talk about a lot in my work with schools is what I wrote about with FRM and change stats here. If your professional development culture relies on one person or one external provider, you don't have a culture, right? You've just got a dependency model.

And that goes straight back to Drew's question. Change fades when the people drive it walk out the door. That is unless you've built something that doesn't depend on them. And finally, five, ask yourself a hard question. How much of your CPD budget is being spent on things that feel

productive versus those that are actually productive? Because somewhere in the money your school spends each year on PD, there's probably waste. Not because your intent's bad, the intent is pretty much always good, in fact, but because the design and the follow-up isn't there. So 1% lasting change, that's the number from the poll that keeps coming back to me, right? We can

do better than that. Not by spending more money. The report makes that pretty clear. It's not a funding problem here. It's a design problem. And we need to think a lot more carefully about what

we're actually trying to achieve and whether our approach matches our ambition. As I said, I'll link the full teacher development trust report in the show notes. It's a really good piece of work. Well worth reading. Even if you're not in England, those patterns, I guarantee you are

universal. And if you're an international school leader, if you're feeling overwhelmed by all of this, or you're looking at your MPD program thinking, yeah, it can probably do better than that, then this is the exact kind of thing we work on in My Education Leaders Intensive. So please do check out that if you're interested in joining me. Next cohort starts in September.

The links in the show notes. Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning. Thanks to the show editor, Pete McGill, production assistant, Skylar Rose-Sturman, and for the original music by Guillemer Silva. And thank you so, so much for tuning in today. If we don't speak before,

as ever, I'll see you here next week. If you're interested in learning more about teaching walkthroughs or the International Curriculum Association, check out the links in the show notes.