About our Training
DDAT provides training/CPD events on a daily basis – there are events on most days, whether that be within curriculum areas such as maths and music or training governors how to hold headteachers to account or training SBMs to be more effective in dealing with HR procedures and processes. From Ofsted to Safeguarding, from Inclusion to Assessment, from Curriculum to Behaviour, or Governance to Health and Safety – what we offer is vast and of the highest quality.
In the academic year 2020/2021 DDAT provided 141 training events and 1,951 people attended. We expect to provide in the region of 200 events in the academic year 2021/2022 with over 2000 people in attendance. Every event is evaluated, and evaluations show that attendees hold the training events in very high regard.
Who organises our training?
We have a large central team that are heavily engaged with our schools. Visiting and working with them on a regular basis means that we have an excellent overview of the needs of each individual school. We use this intelligence to plan our CPD calendar – to offer whole Trust training, but also bespoke individual school training. The training is organised by Sue Vasey (Senior School Improvement Officer with responsibility for Secondary School Improvement, whole Trust Safeguarding and whole Trust CPD/training).
Each Department – Operations (including HR), Finance, and School Improvement (including governance) meet at least every 6 weeks to discuss each school in detail. Through each of these meetings, training needs are identified and planned. As part of DDAT’s executive team, Declan McCauley heads up the school improvement team, Sarah Ferguson heads up the operations team and Richard Wetherall heads up the finance team. These individuals then liaise with Sue Vasey and the training is listed on our website.
Who provides/leads the training?
We have built our central team over the years ensuring that we have the right skills set to be able to offer the very best school improvement provision to our schools. We have personnel who in their previous employment worked for Ofsted as Senior HMIs and had such remits as national lead for mathematics, national lead for English and national lead for Early Years. We have experts in SEND and inclusion in safeguarding and in leadership and management. The calibre of the central team is immense.
We now have 30 schools within the Trust, some of which have been part of our family for 8 years. This has given us lots of time and opportunity to ‘talent spot’. Therefore, the experts from within and across our schools also lead and facilitate training alongside members from the central team. Click here to view our training events and then click on an individual event you will be able to see who from the central team and who from within one of our DDAT schools is leading/delivering the training.
Partners
We have established some very strong and effective partnerships over the years, in order to better serve our schools and indeed help those across the wider system outside of DDAT. For example, we work with Pie Corbett and his team to effectively implement Talk 4 Writing across our schools. We helped FFT devise their Primary Tracker and piloted it in DDAT schools before it was rolled out nationally – we continue to work closely with them. We have a strong and effective relationship with Pearson, helping them improve elements of the Power Maths scheme to make it even more effective. We work with both regional and national partners. For example, we are a delivery partner with Ambition Institute delivering the Early Careers Framework (ECF) training to Early Careers Teachers (ECTs) in the region and we deliver National Professional Qualification (NPQ) programmes on behalf of the Church of England Education Office. We also work with the Derby Research School. And of course, we have a very strong relationship with the Derby Diocesan Board of Education (DDBE) ensuring that our schools are distinctively Christian and serving the common good.
