ABSTRACT
Continuing professional development (CPD) is vital to the health of the profession and the future of education. Developing teachers’ leadership expertise is the second strand of a good-quality CPD regime. Teachers working in pairs can become too relaxed, postponing meetings, letting things slip, not taking things too seriously. Cross-curricular Trios have tended to focus on a wider range of non-subject-based matters: pupil engagement, literacy and numeracy, teacher talk, gender, pupil premium students and so on. The challenge coordinator role was initially devised as a response to a particular school development need. A much better approach is to think classroom to classroom, connecting teachers both in-school and across schools. Senior leaders can easily forget how isolated classroom teachers can become, especially if they work in small or one-person departments like religious education, music or drama. Any consideration of professional development should consider the valuable role teaching schools were designed to fulfil.
