Staff Development – Mulberry Academy Woodside

Staff Professional Development

At Mulberry Academy Woodside, staff development is a strategic priority and underpins our commitment to delivering a high-quality, inclusive education for all pupils. All staff, including Teach First participants, Early Career Teachers (ECTs), and colleagues new to Woodside, benefit from a comprehensive induction and training programme that secures consistently high standards of teaching and learning.

Professional development is continuous, coherent, and closely aligned to school improvement priorities. Staff are supported and encouraged to engage in National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) at appropriate stages of their careers, strengthening subject expertise, pedagogical practice, and leadership capacity.

In addition, all teachers participate in weekly Learning Communities and subject network meetings, which provide structured opportunities for collaboration, reflection, and the sharing of best practice. This is complemented by a programme of INSET days and regular twilight training sessions throughout the year, ensuring professional learning is sustained, impactful, and focused on improving outcomes for pupils.

Universal Professional Development

High-quality teaching is secured through a coherent programme of universal professional development. Weekly Teaching and Learning Communities (TLCs) provide structured, collaborative opportunities for staff to reflect on practice, engage with research, and refine classroom strategies. These are complemented by TeachMeet twilight sessions, which promote the sharing of effective practice across departments and phases.

Professional learning is further strengthened through three major INSET days each year, including a Trust-wide INSET day, ensuring alignment with whole-school and Trust priorities. Staff receive targeted training in high-impact teaching strategies, including the Focus Five approach, Key Stage 4 assessment wrappers, metacognition, and the Anchor Approach, enabling teachers to embed effective learning behaviours and support pupils in becoming reflective, independent learners.

In addition, dedicated sessions on PSHE, reading, and curriculum development strengthen literacy, personal development, and curriculum coherence across the school. This comprehensive and systematic approach ensures that professional development is sustained, evidence-informed, and consistently translated into improved classroom practice and pupil outcomes.

Trainee and Early Career Teachers (ECTs)

At Mulberry Academy Woodside, we are committed to developing confident, skilled and reflective teachers through a high-quality, supportive induction and training programme. Trainee and Early Career Teachers are fully integrated into our culture of exceptional education, every child, every day, and benefit from a structured programme of support that combines statutory requirements with bespoke professional development aligned to the Woodside Teaching and Learning Pillars.

All trainees and ECTs receive their full statutory entitlements, including a reduced teaching timetable (10% reduction in Year 1 and 5% in Year 2, in addition to PPA), ensuring they have protected time to focus on development, reflection and professional learning. Each ECT is supported by a dedicated mentor and an induction tutor, providing clear oversight, guidance and challenge throughout the induction period.

Professional development is carefully structured and highly personalised. ECTs benefit from:

Weekly mentor meetings, providing protected time for mentoring, reflection, target-setting and focused support against the Teachers’ Standards
Regular lesson observations and feedback, ensuring development is incremental, evidence-informed and responsive
A bespoke CPD programme, delivered weekly, which is explicitly mapped to the Early Career Framework, the Teachers’ Standards, and Woodside’s Teaching and Learning Habits, ensuring theory is consistently translated into strong classroom practice.
Access to whole-school professional development, including weekly Teaching and Learning Communities, twilight CPD sessions across the school year, and subject-specific support from experienced Heads of Department, ensuring ECTs benefit from collective expertise and strong departmental leadership
Opportunities to observe expert colleagues and engage in instructional coaching, supporting the development of effective routines, clarity of instruction and responsive teaching

Our approach ensures that trainees and ECTs are not only supported to meet statutory expectations, but are also empowered to develop strong professional identities, deep subject knowledge and effective pedagogical practice. Through high expectations, structured support and a culture of collaboration, we enable early career teachers at Woodside to thrive and to make a positive, lasting impact on pupils’ learning.

ECT/Trainee CPD Programme

Sessions take place weekly on a Tuesday after school
Sessions alternate between strategies and a reflective forum session
The CPD slot is 3:30pm – 4.15pm
All ECTs/trainees are required to attend the sessions
Sessions run in B014 unless otherwise stated

Autumn Term CPD

Spring Term CPD

Summer Term CPD

Train to teach English at our school with Mulberry College of Teaching

Mulberry Academy Woodside is a proud partner of Mulberry College of Teaching: MCoT is a school-based initial teacher training provider working with a strong partnership of local secondary schools based in East London. This means together we offer a richly integrated hub-school programme to ensure that you are immersed in the best evidence-informed research and practice in schools.

We are passionate about the transformative power of teaching. We strive to provide an inclusive and aspirational learning environment for all our students that focuses on excellent outcomes, collaboration, and creative teaching.

We invest in and value our teachers. By learning to teach with us, you will be immersed in schools and will learn from school-based subject-specialists as well as a range of expert practitioners whose practice is grounded in the best available research.

We are now open for applications to train to teach Secondary English for 2025-26. Start your application here.

Visit Mulberry College of Teaching’s dedicated website below to find out more about our programme and how to apply: www.mulberrycollegeofteaching.org

Coaching works best when we focus on small changes. Steps work best when they accumulate over time to help teachers achieve a bigger teaching goal.

During rehearsal, teachers typically try out their step multiple times, with the coach giving balanced feedback between each round. Rehearsal in this low-stakes environment allows teachers to focus all their attention on improving, so they can begin to master their step before taking it to the demanding environment of the classroom.

The instructional coach then works in some time to observe the teacher using their step, and the cycle starts again. Here’s a diagram of the whole instructional coaching model:

White Hart Lane,
Wood Green
London, N22 5QJ

020 8889 6761
020 8365 8164
mail@mulberrywoodside.org

Part of the

The Mulberry Schools Trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (Company No. 10035860).

Company’s registered office: Mulberry Schools Trust, Richard Street, Commercial Road, London E1 2JP. Tel: 020 7790 6327.