It's what we've been aiming for, for a long time

Meet Anna: A champion for teacher development

Before finding her calling in teaching, Anna worked abroad, using her linguistics expertise in international business. However, she craved more variety and purpose in her career. She shared with us the reason how she got into teaching: "It was something that just was second nature to me anyway. I thoroughly love languages, and it just sort of fell into my lap at the right time. I had worked abroad. I found it very easy being in a classroom working with children and so when the opportunity arose for me to do my teaching certificate I did it."

As the lead for Learning and Teaching, Anna now oversees continued professional development across her school. We asked Anna why she has continued to build a career in teaching, and she told us: “It's taken me a while to understand what my motivation was, but I completely see it now. Every day I've got an enormous sense of purpose around what I do.”

Key benefits of working with the NIoT

Anna shared three key benefits she has found from working with the NIoT:

Integrated development path

Currently, the school have four staff members on NPQ programmes and four Early Career Teachers on the ECT programme. Using NIoT for both its ECT and NPQ programmes ensured a coherent approach to professional development and helped establish a shared vocabulary around teaching and learning. As a linguistics expert, Anna understands the importance of language and communication. "The most important thing is that we have a common language, and we're all using the same language. And I don't mean it as a foreign language, but if you're not careful, you think you're speaking the same language as someone in English and you're not," says Anna. "Words like 'scaffolding,' 'consistency,' 'curriculum' all have different meanings to different people. It's important that you all share the same definition of this key vocabulary.”

Anna says, "Having everything with the same organisation helps us provide that thread. We're now using the same language as a school, which has assisted us to have a common vision, a common goal, a common culture."

Real-world application

Anna particularly values NIoT's school-led approach to teacher development such as the practical resources provided that fit busy teacher schedules, and school-based facilitators who understand daily classroom realities. "The work with NIoT is much more based in reality. For instance, some of the videos that are part of the virtual training element are only three to four minutes long. This reflects the NIoT’s understanding of how busy people are in their day-to-day life and acknowledges the time constraints teachers face."

Excellent programme support

Anna shared the exceptional level of service she received from the NIoT, particularly when transitioning from their previous training provider: “Everything was extremely helpful and very clear. I felt that NIoT’s staff were always positive, professional and very, very helpful.” Anna said working with the NIoT was easy. "People are always smiling, ready to talk to you, ready to respond quickly – and that makes a massive difference for us in a busy school."

Important features of our NPQ and ECT programmes

Focus on deliberate practice

A stand out feature of NIoT's approach for Anna is the emphasis on deliberate practice: "For years and years, everybody's been chasing their tail, running around trying to get a good lesson, or an outstanding lesson, without knowing fully what that looks like and what exactly it is that people need to tweak or amend to improve their practice. The deliberate practice element of it has been extremely helpful, in terms of allowing staff the freedom to work on what it is that they need to work on. It has helped us narrow down what we need to do and approach everything in bite-sized chunks rather than trying to do everything at once," Anna explains.

A supportive learning environment

Anna highlights that what makes the NIoT’s programmes special is their unique school-led approach, where facilitators are current school leaders and teachers.

This method ensures that training remains grounded in current classroom experience: "If you're not teaching 5 lessons a day, you can forget what a five-hour teaching day feels like," Anna reflects. "Once you've taken your foot out of the water, you can forget the temperature very, very quickly."

What makes this approach particularly effective is that facilitators bring unique insight to their training because they're actively working in schools, experiencing the same daily challenges as the participants. Facilitators bring in-depth, domain-specific knowledge and can help participants apply learning directly to their school context. "It's very important that people are doing the job as well as delivering the training," Anna adds.

Impact on professional development

The results are evident in staff progression and school culture. Anna shares an example: "I've got a member of staff who did the NPQ for Leading Teacher Development, who has now been promoted to hold a Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) to support with learning and teaching."

Looking forward

The impact of NIoT's programmes extends far beyond individual teacher development. Through consistent language, practical approaches, and deliberate practice, the partnership between Anna’s school and the NIoT has helped create a unified vision for teaching excellence.

"I really like seeing staff get excited about trying new ideas from the course - they've really made these approaches their own," Anna reflects. "That's always a good sign that we're changing the way people think about things." This human-centred, practical approach to professional development is helping schools like Anna's build stronger teaching communities.

For more information on our NPQ and ECT programmes, click here.