Welcome from The Founder

Founder | Next Gen Teaching

What inspired the idea for Next Gen Teaching?

The policy paper on ‘Delivering world-class teacher development’ (DfE, 2022), identifies that ‘the DfE is creating a world-class teacher development system by transforming the training and support teachers and school leaders receive at every stage of their career’ (DfE, Delivering world-class teacher development, 2022).

This document focuses on ITT, ECF and NPQ.  But what about all the teachers who have already qualified?  What about other educational practitioners who support teaching and learning?  What about teachers who do not have a desire to move into leadership?  Are these career paths and choices not valued?

Having worked with a great number of professionals, all around the world, I am aware that we have teachers who do not want to move into leadership; teachers who are, and want to continue to be excellent practitioners.  We also have highly skilled support practitioners, for example, teaching assistants and learning assistants, who are excellent at what they do and want to continue in these roles.  We seem to have a new vision of career development for support practitioners - one which is that they all eventually move into being a classroom teacher.  After speaking to support practitioners across the world, I can confirm that, for many of them, the last career move they want is to be a teacher!  We should value these positions and the people in them.  I know from experience that when you are able to work as a team, with an amazing support practitioner the world of teaching becomes more exciting, fun and rewarding!  Having that team member by your side, to support the learning of students, opens up a whole new world of opportunities within your teaching.  So why not provide high-quality courses for our support practitioners?

The Concept

Across the years I have held a number of different positions.  When discussing my career path with other professionals, I have been referred to as 'niche' based on my varied experience across education.  I have worked my way up through various roles from teaching assistant to teacher, various middle leader roles, followed by senior leadership positions.  I have worked in UK schools, international schools, am a BSO and iQTS Inspector and work on the International Initial Teacher Training Team and am a member of the SCITT Team at University of Sunderland.  From my varied experience, I was able to look at a variety of different elements and design the idea behind Next Gen Teaching.  Combining the most recent expectations of teachers in England and Wales, together with influences from international educational practices, we have designed bespoke courses, to support our classroom practitioners.

Valuing the work of all practitioners

The focus of qualifications from Next Gen Teaching is to provide a regulated option for classroom practitioners, to ensure that there is an option for all practitioners to continue to be excellent in their roles, ensuring their classroom practice remains consistently high, without the need for the expectation to be that they move into a position to show career progression.  

We have become so focused on the need to progress into different positions, that we are forgetting the need for the best of the best in our classrooms - with the students.  Next Gen Teaching provides CPLD to demonstrate that we value our professionals on the frontline of education and that continuing to be an exemplary professional within the classroom is valued as career progression. 

I have always enjoyed working with professionals and supporting them to develop their practice.  I believe that the classroom is the most important part of our job as educators and being able to ensure that all classroom practitioners have the opportunity to continue to develop, wherever they are in the world, is the driving force behind Next Gen Teaching.