Building Staff Talent

“It is through the development of the people in our schools that we unlock improvement.” - Summary Report: School Improvement through Professional Development (Teacher Development Trust, 2020)

Building Staff Talent is one of our strategic ‘big moves’ by developing inspiring, research informed staff.

We have developed exceptional teachers, leaders and professional services staff in schools for over a decade and have an excellent reputation for delivering outstanding and innovative professional development. The Windsor Academy Trust family continually strives to be an employer of choice, and our sector-leading approach features as a case study in Sir David Carter and Laura McInerney’s book, Leading Academy Trusts: Why some fail, but most don’t.

People are our most precious resource

Our approach to staff development is based on the belief that people are our most precious resource. This is demonstrated in how we support, develop, and retain the best staff, to achieve our moral purpose of unlocking students’ academic and personal potential. All staff have an entitlement to equality of access to high quality induction and Continuing Professional Learning (CPL).  

We believe that all staff should be involved in a continuing process of improvement and learning and are committed to fostering and developing a culture of continuous learning for all. CPL is how our Trust and family of schools are able to develop and motivate our staff community. This development occurs at several levels: individual, team, whole school, trust-wide and through wider networks.  

We believe that a carefully planned programme and a CPL culture improve standards, enable personal, school and trust growth, build capacity, raise morale, and assist with recruitment, retention, and succession planning. We also ensure that we have effective measures to audit the professional and personal needs of staff. These measures are integrated into our appraisal system.  

For teaching staff, the focus of CPL is on improving standards and the quality of teaching and learning. We ensure that mechanisms are in place to disseminate good practice in CPL that supports and improves teaching and learning.

“There is no improvement for pupils without improvement in teaching and no improvement in teaching without the best professional development for teachers.” - Knowledge building - school improvement at scale (CST, 2021)

For Professional Services staff, CPL is provided with a focus on improving professional standards, ensuring up to date knowledge of specialist teams and the continuing rollout of best practice. 

You can learn about our approach to professional learning and talent in the document below.