Blog – Latest stories tagged 'CPD'

Free Data Protection (GDPR) refresher training for Safeguarding Essentials members Click here to find out more and register

This time last year, there was one word (or should I say acronym) that was never far from the conversation - GDPR!

We all had the date firmly embedded in our minds and we all received training on how the 25th May changes would affect us.

The DfE issued a Data Protection for Schools Toolkit, highlighting guidance in the form of nine steps schools could take to efficiently develop the culture, processes and documentation required to be compliant with the strengthened legislation to effectively manage the risks associated with data management. This nine-step guide is still available in the form of a 103-page document.

So, one year on, is GDPR done and dusted?

The definite answer to that is no. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) law came into force during 2018 along with the updated Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). But what is the difference between GDPR and Data Protection?

GDPR is the new European law that is the change of a generation. It defines the data subject as the ultimate owner of their personal data, with specific rights, and any organisation, public or private, which processes personal data must have a legal basis to do so.

In addition to this, each country was required to create a local law to ratify the exemptions allowed for their industries and culture. In the UK, this is covered by the Data Protection Act 2018.

Many schools just use the term "data protection" as this is a common title to both laws.

During the early part of 2018, schools took the opportunity to train staff on the changes that were then about to take place. However, 12 months on, many staff members are now due to have that training refreshed.

TrainingSchoolz, a sister company of Safeguarding Essentials, is helping schools manage their refresher training by offering free Data Protection/GDPR online training to all Safeguarding Free, Safeguarding Essentials and E-safety Support members for a limited time. Offer ends Easter!

Schools can register to take the GDPR training and invite up to 300 of their peers to take the course for free as well have access to the simple-to-use yet powerful platform developed specifically for the education sector. Click here to find out more and register or call 0113 360 7838 for further information.

Could online training provide the most cost-effective and time-saving solution to staff training?

According to the recent ‘School Snapshot Survey’ report released by the DfE, “School leadership teams have been encouraged to prioritise the provision of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) opportunities for teaching staff”.

Despite this claim, 91% of teachers surveyed for the report stated that there were still barriers to accessing effective CPD. 70% of teachers cited cost as the most common obstacle, while over half (51%) felt that insufficient time was a contributing factor.

Of course, CPD is just one part of the training story: there is also all the mandatory training, from induction and health & safety to GDPR and Prevent, which must also be kept up to date.

The cost of training doesn’t just begin and end with the course itself. The school also has to add the cost of supply cover if the training takes place during school hours. In addition, when trained staff leave a school, any knowledge learnt goes with them, leaving the school with the expense of paying to re-train another member of the team.

Add to that the challenge of finding time in an already packed school timetable and the requirement to evidence statutory compliance and the training task can soon become inefficient and time-consuming.

So, could online training provide the most cost-effective and time-saving solution?

Yorkshire based ed-tech company, TrainingToolz believes so, and so do their customers. Their bespoke platform for schools, TrainingSchoolz is a simple-to-use yet powerful platform developed specifically for the education sector. It has all the features schools need to create effective training courses, as well as policies and other information for sharing, along with the functionality to distribute, track and audit responses efficiently.

Kim Edwards, Senior Premises and Compliance Officer at Aspire Academies Trust and West Hertfordshire Teaching School Partnership, commented, “TrainingSchoolz makes training the school community easy to manage. Online dashboards allow me to see quickly the percentage of users who have completed the training”.

Darren Rose, a consultant and trainer working with schools and councils across the UK added “Safeguarding and e-safety are at the heart of schools’ compliance. I, too, for my small part, use this very powerful platform to provide data protection training and compliance reporting for schools (SLT, staff & governors). I would strongly recommend it as a platform for other content creators as well as for schools to create their own content”.

The TrainingSchoolz platform allows schools to compile their own training and policy library easily, adding video, audio and downloadable documents to their courses. In addition, TrainingSchoolz also provides a bank of ready-made policies and training courses. The assignments have been professionally written by experts in their field and are designed to save schools time and money over authoring their own training in common areas. Each assignment in this Training Library is fully editable, so schools can tailor it to their needs or use it as it comes.

For schools who would like to find out more about the platform, TrainingSchoolz offers a free sign up, where schools can create their own training courses or policies, or pick one from the fully editable library. And with the 10 training sessions included in the free package, schools can fully test out the system by inviting staff to complete an assignment and see the results.

To find out more, visit www.TrainingSchoolz.com

Continued Professional Development (CPD) for school staff is critical in providing children with the right information and education to stay safe online.

Whether you’re an architect, an IT programmer or a worker in a fast food chain, CPD plays a crucial part in developing human ability, improving working practice and enabling advancement. Take it away and we find our knowledge becomes antiquated, our skills dated and our clients’ trust and confidence eroded. For some professions, a lack of continued training doesn’t just carry commercial consequences. It can also have a serious impact on people’s health and wellbeing.

CPD has never been more important than for those who have a responsibility for the care and protection of others, particularly children. Whilst all state schools have five days set aside by the Government (known as inset days) when schools are closed to children but open for teacher training, many believe this isn’t enough. In February this year, following a report by the Education Select Committee, Schools Week reported that MPs had called for a national CPD annual entitlement. The committee, who has been compiling written and oral evidence on teacher recruitment and retention since 2015, urged the Government to “recognise its own role in promoting the professional development of teachers”, including a “central statement of annual CPD entitlement” for each teacher, which would help improve teacher retention rates. The report stated teachers in England have no entitlement to CPD – even though teachers in Scotland are entitled to 35 hours a year, with teachers in Singapore given 100 hours a year. They also recommended the Government release “targeted funding” for CPD, and said Ofsted should check schools are encouraging CPD during its inspections.

With teachers’ time being squeezed to the optimum with marking, lesson planning and managing those everyday unplanned incidents, it can leave little time for training. On-site training can be difficult to organise and requires a large group of staff in order to realise the best value from the costs imposed. This means using inset days, organising time outside the school day or taking staff out of lessons that then need to covered by somebody else.

With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, online safety training in particular is not something that can just be held once a year, ticked off the list and then scheduled for a refresh at an inset day in a year’s time. Children are discovering new apps, games and forums continuously and the risk landscape is constantly shifting. In January of this year, research commissioned by Besa (British Education Suppliers Association) called for e-safety to become a part of every teacher’s ongoing CPD when a survey of 1,300 ICT lead teachers revealed that around half thought that teachers lacked the required e-safety training. The research stated that “there’s a wide range of jargon and terminology that a pupil may be using, both in reference to drugs and radicalisation that teachers really struggle to keep on top of.”

But with budgets squeezed and teachers’ time at a premium, how do we ensure teachers and supporting school staff receive the e-safety training that they need? The answer comes in taking this training online. Online courses can provide a better alternative to holding group training sessions, giving teachers and staff more flexibility when it comes to the time they choose for their training. Rather than having to block out a certain date and time, teachers can complete the training at a time convenient to them. Online training sessions also have the advantage of being much cheaper than bringing in a dedicated training company.

So, with CPD very much on the education agenda, is it time you reviewed the e-safety training in your school? With an increased emphasis on providing children with the knowledge they need to use the Internet responsibly, it’s more important than ever that we recognise that all school staff play an important role in imparting e-safety knowledge and advice, not just the teachers.

Review our training courses today for free
E-safety Support provides CPD certified teacher training. Whilst some other online training providers charge on a per user or per course basis, E-safety Support is different. Our membership structure means that the whole school pays just one annual fee to access all the e-safety courses available. There’s no restriction on how many of your school community can receive the training so teachers, senior leaders, governors and support staff can all receive the same level of training as and when they need it. To preview our courses today with no obligation, sign up here for a free membership to E-safety Support. Premium Plus members can distribute the training by logging into your E-safety Support dashboard.