Review of PD Standards: The Podcast | Episode 1: Why does professional development need a review?

The CPD Standards Review: Why It Matters and How You Can Shape It

This is the first episode in our series following the Review of Professional Development Standards, the profession-led review hosted by the Chartered College of Teaching that will set new standards for teacher CPD in England.

Adam Kohlbeck is joined by the rest of the review's working group: Professor Sam Twiselton OBE (independent chair), Dr Grace Healy (Director of Education at the Chartered College and vice chair of the steering group), Gareth Conyard (former CEO of the Teacher Development Trust) and Nansi Ellis (education policy specialist and co-author, with Gareth, of Improving Education Policy Together).

Around £1 billion a year is spent on professional development in England. Yet nearly four in ten teachers and leaders surveyed for TDT's 2025 CPD Landscape report said it hadn't clearly improved their practice. So what's going wrong, and what would better look like?

In this episode:

- Why CPD belongs at the centre of school life, not on the margins

- Teacher decision making, from the classroom right up to trust and government level

- Professional identity and why one-size-fits-all CPD keeps missing the mark

- What Chartered Teacher Status has taught the College about agency and ownership

- Didagogy: the evidence, the school context and the teacher's own belief in what they're doing

- The Teacher Forum, a citizens' assembly style group of 100 teachers who will help write the new standards

GET INVOLVED

Apply to join the Teacher Forum (teachers in England, closes Friday 6 November): https://r1.dotdigital-pages.com/p/449V-1773/teacher-forum-pds

Register for project updates: https://r1.dotdigital-pages.com/p/449V-177Q/pd-standards

About the review: https://chartered.college/research-and-policy/policy-and-advocacy/review-of-professional-development-standards/

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Teacher Development: The CPD Landscape in 2025 (TDT): https://chartered.college/research-and-policy/publications/teacher-development-the-landscape-in-2025/

What is Didagogy? Exploring the Discipline of Teaching Teachers (TDT): https://chartered.college/research-and-policy/publications/what-is-didagogy-exploring-the-discipline-of-teaching-teachers/

Chartered Teacher Status: https://chartered.college/chartered-status/

Got a question you'd like the working group to tackle? Send it to us on LinkedIn and we'll put it to them in a future episode.

FOLLOW THE CHARTERED COLLEGE

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/chartered-college-of-teaching

X: @charteredcoll

Bluesky: @collegeofteaching.bsky.social

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