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In this page you will find a list of all our professional learning courses, along with the relevant Associate and Senior Associate accreditation criteria.
Our courses support the specific skills that are required to enable school and college improvement and are a mixture of full-day courses and half-day courses which can be delivered online or face to face.
For group bookings either online or face to face please contact us as a one-off cost can be agreed dependant on numbers. Please note that for in-person training expenses are extra (i.e., travel and accommodation for our staff).
For more information, or if you would like to book a place for you or your team, please get in touch by emailing info@aoea.co.uk or calling 0191 820 3114
Click on the title below to learn more.
Advisory work comes in many shapes and sizes, and your overall approach and interpersonal skills are likely to be as vital to success as your specialist and specific expertise.
This professional learning is designed specifically for those wanting to build their repertoire and range of advisory skills. It is particularly suited to those new to the processes of advisory and consultancy work and will introduce a range of approaches to support contracting, building effective relationships and project management. It will also be of benefit to those with experience of advisory work, who would like to get better results or gain greater confidence with their interpersonal skills.
The course will cover three key areas:
Contracting: information gathering and effective questioning skills, including ecology checks, gaining clarity about the brief, goal setting, agreeing outcomes and outputs.
Building effective relationships: building trust and rapport, engaging with your client, influencing and leadership skills, personal impact, different ways of promoting and facilitating problem solving.
Project management: including evaluating and effective planning; using meta programmes to support understanding of your own personal attributes in relation to organisational skills; how to make the most of these to get the job done and demonstrate you have met the brief.
Delivered by: Dr Tony Birch and Eithne Leming
Length of Course: Two half days
We will explore those key questions of coaching, start to build coaching relationships, practice skills, start to learn the language of coaching, digest case studies, consider goal setting, tuning in, contracting, and the ToGROW techniques.
All sessions will be pragmatic, pacy and outcome focused, so that participants go away confident in a new set of practical skills they can apply between sessions. We ask participants to keep diaries of ongoing practice that will feed into their case studies for levels 4 & 5.
Delivered by: Tony Markowski and Éamonn Whelan
Length of Course: Half day
This session will build on your AoEA Level 1 Coaching knowledge by learning about and applying different approaches. There will be a plethora of new and different ideas, challenges, and case studies to stimulate debate and enhance your learning and the practical sessions.
As well as goal setting, tuning in, and contracting, we will consider: chemistry; ‘the tone’; trusting relationships; authenticity; co-active coaching; beginnings, middles and endings; metaphors; drawing; using the space; OSKAR; ZOUD; and unconditional positive regard.
Delivered by: Tony Markowski and Éamonn Whelan
Length of Course: Half day
This session will build on levels 1 and 2 and look to forward and deepen coaching practice by introducing advanced coaching techniques. It will also mark a subtle change, which demands that thinking moves towards how best to introduce coaching into the team setting, with a view to becoming part of a small-scale system.
We will consider your coaching approach and thoughts, and challenge you in the practical sessions. We will explore: chemistry; the coaching state; co-active approaches; return to OSKAR and ZOUD; discuss beginnings, middles, and endings; intuition; body language; and BAGs.
Two participants will feedback on background reading designed to extend and enhance learning.
Delivered by: Tony Markowski and Éamonn Whelan
Length of Course: Half day
This half-day course is for those wishing to develop a coaching approach to their work. It is suitable for those with a leadership role in schools, advisory services, local authorities, Multi-Academy Trusts or with an HR function in a related industry. Building on the introductory course offered earlier in the year, this session will consider the impact of coaching on individuals, the teams they lead and the outcomes that might be expected.
Rooted in experience and based on current research in education and business, the session will provide insight, practical demonstration and collaborative opportunity to experience and learn about coaching.
Delivered by: Tony Markowski and Éamonn Whelan
Length of Course: Half day
This final session will look at learning to date; best practice locally and nationally; your responses to specified learning, reading and practice; and seek to simplify the task of introducing a coaching and change management system.
Delivered by: Tony Markowski and Éamonn Whelan
Length of Course: Half day
This one-day course is for those seeking to design effective models of collaboration and partnership within and beyond the education system. It is suitable for those working in schools/Academies and for those operating in the middle tier of education systems (Local Authorities, Multi-Academy Trusts and Initial Teacher Training, for example).
Building and supporting effective partnership and collaboration requires both knowledge and skill and this course aims to equip participants with a stronger understanding of the nature of partnership, how to build the infrastructure to support it, together with the practical interpersonal skills to make it work. The course will refer to examples and case studies of partnership and how to structure them to meet identified needs leading towards an understanding of how to assess their collective impact.
Delivered by: Dr Tony Birch and Sean Cavan
Length of Course: Full day
This module will focus on how role of the advisor interacts with that of the Senior Leadership Team and is influenced by the context and drivers for that work. It will explore how advisers can analyse how SLT functions and consider implications for improvement journey. It will further explore the significance of agreed and co constructed milestones and building in sustainable self-improvement.
Delivered by: Eric Halton and Martyn Beales
Length of Course: Half day
As advisers we strive to support improvement in a range of contexts with each individual institution offering us a unique challenge. How can we then, as advisers, judge our own contribution? During this session you will have opportunity to reflect on this critical question and spend time working with the AoEA efficacy model and how it can be used to help us determine just how effective we are.
Delivered by: Tom Grieveson
Length of Course: Half day
Suitable for primary curriculum leaders, principals or consultants. If you are a primary subject leader, a curriculum phase leader or a senior leader responsible for overall school curriculum design and implementation, this workshop is for you!
This course is designed to introduce a shared understanding of ‘curriculum’, how it shapes every aspect of school life, develops character, and enables all children and young people to make good choices.
Delivered by: Narinder Gill
Length of Course: Half day
Many of the difficulties faced by schools and trusts can be attributed to poor or weak governance. In recent times, a small number of multi academy trusts have come to notice following governance failures to properly hold to account poor leadership and management. Many local authority schools are under pressure due to poor academic and financial performance.
This half day course will introduce advisers and consultants to the practice, structures and documentation that they will need to carry out a thorough and impactive review of governance within the education sector.
Delivered by: Steve Hodsman
Length of Course: Half day
The organisational development approach is for advisers and school leaders who wish to support high and low performing organisations to be self-managing and self-sustaining.
There are still too many schools and multi-academy trusts that become vulnerable, either in terms of standards, financial strength or governance. Increasingly, schools and trusts need support to be self-sustaining in their ability to develop and grow. They also need to be able to predict what is coming, rather than simply react to external forces. The pace of change in education is probably faster than it has ever been. Keeping pace with it or, better still, anticipating change is a vital ingredient for a proactive leader. There is a need for advisers who have the specialist skills and resilience to help build capacity and, in the end, ‘be not necessary’.
This training programme assumes the participant has expertise in supporting and advising schools, is a school improvement expert, and has a deep understanding of governance and leadership.
Delivered by: Les Walton CBE
Length of Course: Full day
Integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP) is for advisers and leaders who wish to develop their knowledge and understanding of best practice in this area. This is applicable to professionals working both with individual educational institutions (Associate Level) and groups of schools/academies (Senior Associate Level).
Please note, we are running a half-day ICFP course that is focussed on Primary level education and a full-day ICFP course that is focussed on Secondary level education.
Delivered by: Kevin McDermid
Length of Course: Half day
Most of us will have come across highly successful organisations or departments where there is a keen sense of commitment to working with colleagues to achieve high outcomes. Many of us will also have come across organisations where there is a vagueness about the roles and objectives and low levels of structure and commitment. How can we assess or analyse the ‘Context for Organisational Improvement’ (COI) that leads to high performance or provides an indicator of potential decline?
The AoEA has used its experience of school improvement coupled with a review of relevant leadership research to establish a way of assessing the Context for Organisational Improvement. It provides another way of analysing working relationships in leadership teams and promote discussion of factors which facilitate or impede improvement.
Delivered by: Peter Parish, Ian Lane and Les Walton CBE
Length of Course: Half day
This half -day course is for primary and secondary headteachers, senior and middle leaders in schools who design and implement curriculum and assessment. It is also intended for those who advise on curriculum; education advisers, LA advisers, MAT CEOs. Designing a curriculum means establishing the Intent (Values and Vision), Implementation (Pedagogy and Assessment) and Impact (Pupils’ Progress and Learning Standards). To do this we need to know what works best in the context of each school and pupil profile.
This is applicable to professionals working both with individual educational institutions (Associate Level) and groups of schools/academies (Senior Associate Level).
Supporting schools in effective curriculum and assessment is for primary and secondary principals who wish to develop their knowledge and understanding so they can optimise progress and outcomes for all pupil groups. These include pupils with literacy/language barriers, special education needs, and the More Able.
Delivered by: Meena Wood
Length of Course: Half day
This course is intended for both primary and secondary headteachers, senior and middle leaders who want to ensure that all pupils benefit from a good quality of education and optimise their learning and outcomes. It is also intended for those who advise on curriculum; education advisers, MAT CEOs.
Moving away from a ‘tick box’ judgemental mindset, we gather valid and reliable evidence on pupils’ learning. How we optimise our pupils’ progress and outcomes is more important now, than ever, in view of the legacy of sickness absences and the gaps in pupils’ knowledge and skills
PPR lies at the heart of the school’s educational provision. It establishes a culture of intrinsic motivation and professional development for staff through instructional coaching.
Delivered by: Meena Wood
Length of Course: Half day
This full-day course is for those who wish to develop high level skills and knowledge of how to support organisations when managing change. The education system is complex and constantly changing. Change ranges from low-disturbance and incremental to high disturbance and radical, from local change to that imposed from national initiatives. System level change requires an enhanced skill level on the part of the adviser. Organisations at all levels in the education system may get into difficulty, which may lead to negative publicity, be very costly to put right and, most importantly, have a negative impact on the future of their students and staff. It is, therefore, important that advisers support organisations to take hold of the change agenda.
Delivered by: Ray Steele and Dr Tony Birch
Length of Course: Full day
The quality systems approach is for advisers and school leaders who wish to work at the highest level in education systems improvement.
One of the major problems in our education system is not understanding why results vary in a particular school or within groups of schools. We want to know how we can move towards the ‘ideal state’, in which schools are in control of their processes and, therefore, achieve consistently higher outputs. Schools and MATs are also increasingly interested in a quality-systems approach to long-term success through continuous improvement and intelligent feedback, rather than quick fixes for external inspection.
This training programme assumes the participant has expertise in supporting and advising schools, is a school improvement expert, and has a deep understanding of governance and leadership. We expect applicants to wish to develop high level skills and knowledge of how organisations are transformed.
Delivered by: Les Walton CBE
Length of Course: Full day
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+44 (0) 191 820 3114