Case Study: Embedding Coherence and Impact Across Acorn Education Trust

Steplab has a longstanding partnership with Ambition Institute in their delivery of the DfE’s Golden Thread of PD programmes.

If you’re working with Ambition Institute for Initial Teacher Training (ITT), the Early Career Framework (ECF) or National Professional Qualifications (NPQ), you’ll already be accessing Ambition’s leading curriculum and content through Steplab’s innovative platform.

But Steplab is far more than a platform for ITT, the ECF and NPQs – our impact goes far beyond the Golden Thread.

How Acorn Education Trust uses Steplab to drive coherent PD

Within Acorn Education Trust, we’ve designed our PD curriculum around the mechanisms of effective PD, ensuring coherence from the ECT stage through to highly experienced staff. Steplab plays a central role in supporting this coherence.

It enables us to develop a bespoke PD programme aligned with our Trust’s teaching and learning priorities, while retaining the flexibility to adapt to emerging needs throughout the course of the programme.

Our developmental leadership drop-ins are a core part of how we support the implementation of these techniques in our classrooms. Drop-ins are tightly focused on trust-wide priorities and provide staff with actionable feedback to improve practice in specific areas. They also reflect the coaching approach our ECTs become familiar with during the ECF.

We are developing a consistent process of setting small, specific steps for all teachers to work on - an approach that Steplab both supports and enhances. The ‘golden threads’ that run through Steplab’s materials help reinforce our priorities across all levels of experience. Techniques introduced during the ECT years can be developed, refined, and applied with greater nuance as staff become confident with them.

The Steplab platform offers models that exemplify each step, complementing our own PD sessions and providing teachers with self-study materials they can access at their own pace. Steplab has been instrumental in helping us build a coherent, responsive, and impactful PD offer across the trust.

If you’d like to hear more about how Steplab can support your school’s professional development, get in touch at [email protected] or book a demo.