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Staff training and development is important in any organisation. For International Schools, it has profound significance. From attracting the right staff and dealing with a high staff turnover, through to managing regional compliance and keeping staff up-to-date on school policies and procedures, your school’s investment in staff training is vital. 

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) opportunities are not only attractive to new and existing staff but also help create a healthy school culture that can be felt and embraced by all stakeholders.

So how can your international school achieve this?

Create a staff training plan

You need to consider all of the training needs in-school in order to create a training plan that speaks to every area you wish to support and develop.

• Survey staff
  You need to know where there are knowledge gaps or opportunities for training with existing staff. A great way to ascertain training needs is to survey staff and identify the level of know-how across individuals, departments and year groups within school.
   

• Outline the information new recruits need for onboarding
  When your recruitment drive is in full flow, you want to give the best impression to new recruits. Induction periods can be a vulnerable time after all the work and cost to find suitable candidates, so presenting them with a well structured timetable of meetings and training will help them to ease into school life. It is in your interest to get them up to speed as quickly as possible, so this upfront work is a great investment in people.
   

• Identify compliance requirements
  There is little choice in getting this one right, but compliance training will sit so much easier when embedded as part of a wider training programme. Whilst it will naturally live within the onboarding timetable, getting staff used to continuous training will mean that any compliance refreshers can be easily picked up.
   

• Decide on content and delivery
  With the training plan coming together, the delivery method is an important consideration. For your programme to work long term, you need to invest in a platform that will support diverse training needs, provide an accessible and friendly solution for staff and preferably with reporting functionality so you can keep a check on progress, the effectiveness of the training and also evidence compliance records as required

How your training plan will help see off the competition

If you invest the time and consideration needed to put a comprehensive training plan together and implement it effectively, you will stand out from the competition and here’s how…

• Investment in training is an investment in people
  With a clear and shared vision for the importance of CPD in-school, this cannot fail to create a healthy people-focused culture. Happy people will project positivity to outsiders which will help to build a great reputation for your school. Word soon gets around if a school is seen to be a good employer but also the parent community is likely to pick up on this which can have a positive impact on attracting pupils as well as staff.
   

• Your school is faster to respond
  As alluded to earlier, having a ready-made, good quality onboarding programme and process means you can respond to the need for new staff quickly. As schools compete in a small recruitment pool the promotion of an organised onboarding and subsequent training programme tells candidates that you are ready to make them feel at home. Boosting the time they need to get up to speed also means that new staff can become active quickly, avoiding long gaps whilst they find their way and ensuring pupils don’t experience issues with teacher allocation or administrative/extra-curricular support.
   

• You can build a stronger brand
  Brand is everything to an international school as it represents the expected experience staff, pupils and parents will have. Your training programme is no small contributor to that brand reputation as it demonstrates strong leadership, professional organisation, healthy culture and strong pedagogical practise. With the right delivery system, training can be personalised so that every individual can feel part of and embody the school’s values which will shine externally too.
   

• The left side knows what the right side is doing
  Well-informed staff leads to well-informed pupils and parents. New challenges will always come along but how well your staff are empowered and equipped to deal with issues dictate the outcome and impact. As part of your training programme, sharing information on your policies and procedures and encouraging staff to familiarise themselves with it ensures they know where to turn when things go awry. Great handling of an issue can often be the making of a brand if those impacted feel they have been looked after and kept informed of the action and solution.