Professional development plays a vital role in school staff recruitment and retention – and international schools especially stand to benefit from a strong development offer. 

With unique challenges posed by hiring staff from all over the world, high turnover resulting from fixed-term contracts, and varying CPD requirements by country, it's important for international schools to consider how their development offer could drive stronger recruitment and retention. 

But for schools to feel the benefit, your professional development offer must be effective. An audit of your development offer is a great place to start to assess how effective it is – and the areas where you can improve. 

We know it might feel like a big task, so we’ve put together a guide to conducting a teacher development audit at your international school or school group. 

Contents 

1. Why conduct a teacher development audit? 

2. How to conduct a teacher development audit 

3. Support for your school 

Why conduct a teacher development audit?

A strong professional development offer helps a school:

• Improve staff retention

• Develop leadership pipelines

• Improve student outcomes 

Development matters at all stages, from trainee teachers to teaching assistants and support staff, teachers and leaders. 

As a school or school group leader, reviewing your professional development offer will help you identify where it could improve â€“ and how you can reap the benefits offered by strong teacher development. 

Here’s our step-by-step guide to completing a teacher development audit: 

How to conduct a teacher development audit 

1. Self-assess your offer 

To conduct a teacher development audit, start by breaking your offer down into categories and rating each as to whether it is consistent, partly in place, or missing.

We recommend reviewing your professional development offer in the following categories: 

• Strategy and culture 

• Inclusion and access 

• Learning quality 

• Pathways and progression 

• Impact 

2. Survey your staff 

Once you’ve completed reviewing your school or school group’s development offer, put together a staff survey to explore how your offer feels in practice.  

We'd suggest organising your survey questions in the same categories as your self-review, as it’s important to understand how your leadership’s view varies from that of your staff. 

We'd also recommend that you include open questions so staff can share any specific thoughts on your development offer. 

Our guide includes a recommended list of survey questions, but you can adapt this as needed to suit your school context. 

3. Turn your findings into an action plan 

Compare your review of your development offer to the results of your staff survey. 

Once you have compiled your findings, certain areas may stand out. This might include areas where: 

• Both leadership and staff have given low scores 

• Staff scores are much lower than leaders’ 

Any stand-out areas such as these provide you with a starting point for addressing challenges and improving your staff development offer. 

Choose a specific time period â€“ such as 30 or 90 days – and set your priorities for this time. It's important you define what action is required, who is responsible, and what success would look like. 

Then, at the end of this time period, you can review what has changed and decide your next steps. 

Support for your schoolÌý

A teacher development audit is a great starting point – but what will you do with your findings?Ìý

AtÌýÌÇÐÄVlogÌýInstitute, we work with schools and school groups to turn your priorities into practical action, so you can build schools where every student and staff member thrives.

How weÌýcanÌýsupportÌýyouÌý