Taking the lead with our Education Partnership Workshops

This January, we’ve been holding a series of Education Partnership Workshops designed for senior leaders in the education sector. As part of our continued commitment to schools and colleges across the country, we want to ensure that our clients have access to the most current and up-to-date training, keeping them at the top of their game.

At New Directions Education, we place community at the heart of what we do. Therefore, we’re proud to support our schools and colleges by providing high-quality Continuing Professional Development training free of charge to Headteachers, Deputy Headteachers and Business Leaders. Our Education Partnership Workshops are aimed at education leaders who want to build on their knowledge of the latest classroom techniques and best practice. We want to enable them to lead from the front and be pioneers in education.

The workshops and courses we offer support the Welsh Government’s vision for the new curriculum for Wales. In addition, they empower our clients to stay abreast of the latest classroom methods. We’ve been running half-day workshops in January covering two key topics: Maximising Pupil Progress and Support for Curriculum for Wales.

Maximising Pupil Progress

ESTYN have clearly identified the importance of pupil progress, urging schools to secure successful futures. Our Maximising Pupil Progress session is practical and supportive, establishing how to secure evidence of pupil progress, how to use key resources, how to ensure learners listen well and how learners can demonstrate their own progress.

The session is led by the experienced Gareth Coombes, who was a successful Headteacher of a primary school for seven years. He now runs his own educational consultancy businesses that provides support for schools in terms of both Inset and practical resources for improving teaching and leadership.

Gareth is also co-director of Teaching Continua, a resource which supports schools to improve teaching for learning in sustainable ways. He works across a variety of regional, national and international settings. Furthermore, Gareth is passionate about supporting schools to ‘work smarter not harder with Assessment for Learning’, so that pupils work harder than teachers and pupil progress is maximised.

Support for Curriculum for Wales

We recognise that senior education leaders in a range of roles face daily choices that have a direct impact on learner outcomes. The role of a senior leader is to ensure that every learner has the opportunity to become the most effective and successful adult they can be, and now, during the process of curriculum reform, these decisions have become even more pertinent.

With this in mind, our workshop gives an honest and practical view of the curriculum reform process in Wales. It focusses on:

• how to use key elements of the curriculum to have a positive impact on learning
• robust, reliable research on learning and how it fits with the proposed new Curriculum For Wales
• important lessons to learn from curriculum reform in Scotland
• strategic decisions for senior leaders that make the most of the curriculum reform journey
• and how to create professional learning that has a real impact on teacher understanding, expertise and autonomy.

Led by Jane Miller and Finola Wilson, experts from IMPACT Wales, this workshop is delivered by trainers with a wealth of experience as teachers and senior leaders in education. Therefore, they are well-placed to support education leaders with the changes to the curriculum in Wales.

Work in partnership with us

Our Education Partnership Workshops have been a great success, with over 200 education leaders attending sessions in Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham. Not only have they been a fantastic opportunity to learn, develop, network and share best practice among the education community; but they have also addressed two key and prominent topics that are currently in the education spotlight.

David Lewis, Head Teacher at Aberbargoed Primary School, attended both parts of our Education Partnership Workshops this January. He explained that “the Maximising Pupil Progress session with Gareth Coombes really highlighted the importance of what learners do in the classroom. It looked at focusing on their achievements and how schools can measure learners’ progress. This was an invaluable aspect of the training.”

Meanwhile, David commented that “the Support for Curriculum for Wales session will be beneficial for schools in helping them come to terms with the requirements and expectations of the new curriculum. In fact, IMPACT Wales are providing fantastic support. They’re helping schools to design their curriculum for learning and concentrating on key aspects of the new curriculum for Wales.”

If you’re a school looking for support with filling your supply staff vacancies and would like to benefit from an array of additional benefits such as our Education Partnership Workshops too, contact New Directions Education today to have a chat with one of our specialist Account Managers about how we can work in partnership with you.

With over two decades of experience in the education sector and as a preferred supplier of education staff to all 22 local authorities in the Welsh Government National Procurement Service framework, you can trust us to meet your staffing needs and more!