How much CPD (Continual professional development) should you do? And what will your inspector expect to see if they visit?
The only training you have to do is Safeguarding training as recommended by your Local Safeguarding Board and your Paediatric First Aid. However, if you want to grow and develop your practice CPD is a must, especially if you are aiming at trying to get an Outstanding grade.
The Early Years Inspection Handbook, Leadership and Management grade descriptor for outstanding practitioners states:
‘Leaders ensure that they and practitioners receive focused and highly effective professional development. Practitioners’ subject, pedagogical content and knowledge consistently builds and develops over time, and this consistently translates into improvements in the teaching of the curriculum.’ (My Italics.)
From the point of view of the EYFS there is no set amount of CPD hours that you have to do. What is more important and what your Inspector will be wanting to see is see what CPD you are choosing to do and why.
Carefully choosing focused CPD based on your own needs shows that you have evaluated and have a good understanding of your own skills and knowledge and what you need to do next to fill in gaps in your own learning.
It is also really important to think about the impact that your training is having. A short piece of CPD which has a lot of beneficial impact for the children is much better than a long course which does not have much effect on what you do. Think about the last piece of CPD you did. What did you change as a result of that CPD? How did the children benefit?
Here is an example: You evaluate what you know and decide that you would benefit from improving your understanding of how children learn. You source and complete some good CPD on the Characteristics of Effective Learning. As a result of your learning you start to include more activities helping children explore their creative and critical thinking and you design a poster to help explain the characteristics to the children’s parents. As a result the children develop their problem solving skills and are supported with their learning at home too.
Don’t forget, CPD does not have to be formal training courses. As long as you are looking for good quality CPD that has a beneficial effect you can do all sorts of things. Reading this blog counts as a small piece of CPD. The impact? Knowing about the importance of evaluating what what you do and deciding on focused CPD to implement your learning more effectively.
Products that can help:
Guided Self-Evaluation Pack
This pack helps you evaluate all the important parts of your work. It contains questions based on the Early Years Inspection handbook to help you structure your evaluation. Each question has a sample answer and sections to help you break down your thoughts and consider what you are doing well, things you want to improve and what steps you want to take to get there.
Childminding Best Practice Club
Each month members of the club receive a special ‘toolkit,’ filled with specially designed resources. The toolkit is split into two sections, a ‘My Curriculum’ section containing planning and activities to do with the children and a ‘My Learning Section.’ The ‘My Learning’ section contains a self-evaluation question with a follow-up CPD training module. Each module comes with resources and ideas to help you put your learning into practice and a certificate to print out.
