Eighteen months ago, the “Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Teaching School Hub” was established and before Christmas we caught up with its leader, Lynne Birch, to find out more about the hub’s purpose and the benefits that it brings.
Lynne, can you tell us a bit about the Hub?
In February 2021 the Department for Education (DfE) announced the creation of 87 new Teaching School Hubs, with a £65 million investment over an initial three years. The then Histon and Impington Junior School, as part of CPET, was the designated Teaching School Hub for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough schools with responsibility for 345 schools in every type of setting. Our key purpose is to provide high-quality training and professional development to support teachers and leaders at every stage of their career with the aim of raising teaching standards and contributing significantly to school improvement. Since launching in September 2021, around 1,130 staff in over 200 schools across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have engaged with us. Whilst I am the day-to-day lead, Lesley Birch is the Hub’s Strategic Lead, and collectively we work closely to support staff development in Meridian Trust.
What does the hub offer to teachers?
Essentially, we provide training for teachers from the very start where they are training to teach right up to Executive Headship. We work in five main areas:
• Initial Teacher Training (working with our SCITT partners, The Cambridge Partnership based here at Meridian Trust, CTSN SCITT and Teach East, as well as Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Cambridge to deliver ITT programmes).
• Early Career Framework (delivering support for teachers in the first two years of their careers).
• Appropriate Body (monitoring support and assessment for early career teachers).
• National Professional Qualifications (we currently run nine programmes for current and aspiring leaders, including four specialist NPQs).
• Wider CPD programmes (reflecting the needs of our area and in collaboration with curriculum hubs and local partners).
We have created what we believe is a centre of excellence in the region, working collaboratively locally and nationally through strong, supportive partnerships. Existing relationships with MATs/schools, other Teaching School Hubs and the Teaching School Hubs Council have been critical. This extends to our delivery partners – lead providers, curriculum hubs and research schools. Our approach has been around achieving operational excellence.
What are the biggest challenges faced by the teaching sector?
Thinking specifically about engagement with the Teaching School Hub there are undoubtedly some big challenges in terms of limited time, workload and capacity. Data published in January showed that recruitment of teachers onto NPQs, for example, only hit a fifth of the DfE’s three-year target at the end of its first year in operation. The ongoing impact of Covid-19, budgetary cuts, the requirement to deliver catch-up initiatives and the introduction of wider changes such as the ECF were all held up as reasons. Overall, we have sought to make the changes to how new teachers are supported, and leaders developed, as easy as possible for schools. The good news is we do not have a single ‘cold spot’ across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough where we are not operating, but we want to deepen our relationships further. We expect every teacher, school leader and wider school staff to have the best professional development they can.
Do you feel optimistic about the future of teaching?
Yes, I really do. From my point of view, there is a lot that we can offer the profession in terms of development over the duration of their career and school leadership teams are starting to truly embrace our work because they understand the long-term benefits to their staff and students. Ultimately our aim is that our children attend schools with high-quality teachers and leaders in all phases. Our children deserve high-quality education. This, I am sure we can all agree on. Our simple underlying mission to “deliver what is useful to people” has been at the heart of everything we have delivered/achieved to date. We have sought and responded to feedback from participants and schools. This comes back to our fundamental ethos of wanting every teacher and school leader to have the best professional development they can.
How do you measure your success?
We report to the DfE, so we have KPIs with them, and the Hub has met and exceeded targets set by for its first year (and we expect to double the number of leaders and teachers supported in the 2022-23 school year). However, what we are most interested is whether children are doing better in class and whether leaders are feeling more confident in their staff. That is the whole point really. Although we’ve only been in operation for 18 months, it is this kind of qualitative feedback that really matters. We have a strategy group made up of representatives from around our area and they help us prioritise and direct our resources in the right way, which is a key element to refining and defining our success. We’re very keen to engage with as many schools as we possibly can. We have reached 60% of our schools within our first year (which I’m really proud of), so we are putting a lot of effort into getting a sense of what is happening at ground level and understanding how we can support teachers all the way through their career journey.
How can we find out more about the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Teaching School Hub?
A great place to start is by subscribing to our newsletter. This enables teachers to see what training programmes we are offering this year. We are always looking for mentors and facilitators – which is something that is funded by the government – so if teachers are interested in mentoring or becoming a facilitator to support the delivery of the ECF or NPQs, please do get in touch. We are constantly recruiting because we are growing so quickly! Subscribe to the newsletter here: https://www.cptshn.co.uk/contact-us/newsletter-subscription-form. You can also follow us on Twitter, where we have a steadily rising following (@cptshub).