Teacher development and the new Ofsted framework

High-quality teacher professional development (PD) is central to improving teaching expertise and student outcomes. As schools prepare for the new Ofsted framework (2025), leaders are increasingly focused on building evidence-informed professional development programmes that enhance teacher effectiveness and drive school improvement.

Claire and Kat explore Ofsted’s renewed focus on teacher development and how leaders can respond.

The new Ofsted framework (2025) explicitly references leaders’ role in establishing and sustaining a strong culture of professionalism in schools, encouraging a commitment to continuous improvement in teaching expertise through evidence-based professional development (p.76). This expectation plays a role in shaping the design of professional development (PD): not as isolated training events, but as a sustained and coherent programme of CPD for teachers rooted in the needs and priorities for the school, staff, and students.

The most effective PD programmes tightly align with school improvement priorities, underpinned by the best available evidence, and are focused on building long-term teaching expertise rather than offering isolated ‘quick fixes’. Crucially, the best PD for teachers mirrors the same high expectations and sequencing we apply to our curriculum: it is deliberate, planned, and progressively builds teacher capability over time.

Done well, teacher professional development programmes are designed to integrate subject-specific knowledge with pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986). This is not PD that relies on generic training sessions but rather targeted, collaborative opportunities for staff to rehearse, refine, and embed techniques linked directly to upcoming lessons or curriculum content. Instructional coaching and rehearsal help teachers refine techniques in subject-specific contexts – a key part of sustained improvement.

This granular, curriculum-anchored focus on embedding evidence-informed professional development is what drives real improvement.

A coherent teacher professional development programme entails far more than a collection of training sessions and should be treated as a carefully sequenced curriculum. Like any good curriculum, it should be rooted in intention and purpose – specifically focused on priorities for school improvement (Sims et al, 2021).

Professional development disconnected from a school’s priorities risks becoming ‘noisy’ (Kennedy, 2016) and ineffective, detached from teachers’ needs. Whether focused on improving oracy, supporting pupils with SEND, or increasing participation ratio, PD must be designed to solve the most pressing problems as a targeted response to what leaders know about their school.

But coherence isn’t just about alignment to priorities – sequencing of the PD curriculum is also crucial. Just as pupils learn best when knowledge builds cumulatively, teachers benefit from the same. Fragmented PD with one week on modelling, the next on retrieval, leads to superficial understanding. A better approach maps teacher learning over time.

If through lesson drop-ins leaders identify that securing student attention is a key priority, a sequence of PD that starts by focusing on how to proactively attain students' attention, moving to how to deliberately direct attention and later to reducing distractions and maintaining attention will be far more effective than a sequence that moves from one focus to another each week.

This sequencing also supports habit formation. A well-sequenced PD programme revisits key ideas, allowing teachers to refine and embed them. It also provides time for rehearsal, practice, and feedback – all key ingredients (Sims et al, 2021) for sustained improvement.

A well-designed professional development curriculum can act as a key driver of school improvement and deserves the same rigour, sequencing and clarity of purpose we apply to the pupil curriculum. School leaders should view their PD offer as a curriculum for teacher expertise, building knowledge, skills and understanding for teachers to be experts in the classroom.

The new Ofsted framework emphasises the importance of leaders ensuring that teachers possess expert knowledge – not just of the national curriculum but of their subject’s conceptual architecture and how it unfolds across phases. This requires leaders to understand subject differences and empower subject leaders to consider teaching strategies best suited to the knowledge and skills that children will learn about next.

Generic feedback on practice (“ask more open questions”) or PD that focuses on simply telling teachers to use a technique will make little difference to their practice. Ineffective teaching is often not due to teachers not knowing how to ask questions, but because of a lack of clarity regarding how to ask questions that will best suit the curricular content they’re delivering.

Whether during instructional coaching or through group PD, teachers require both models and time to apply and rehearse techniques grounded in the curriculum to be delivered. By situating rehearsal within the context of an upcoming lesson, teachers can focus on how techniques can be used to make their curriculum enactment more effective.

In a group PD session focused on modelling, if leaders create the conditions for high-quality lesson-specific rehearsal, they can better support teachers to apply key modelling techniques situated within subject-specific contexts.

A maths teacher might identify an upcoming lesson focused on multi-step word problems and use the PD session to rehearse and receive feedback on modelling step-by-step reasoning. An English teacher might use the same technique to rehearse live-writing analytical paragraphs. By rehearsing techniques grounded in upcoming lessons, teachers practise their application contextualised for their classroom, leading to higher adoption and greater motivation (Sunal et al, 2021).

School and trust leaders should ensure that all group professional development respects subject difference, encouraging teachers and subject leaders to consider which strategies are most appropriate for their curriculum area.

It’s not enough to design and run a PD programme and hope it will lead to improvement. Leaders require a finely tuned understanding of PD’s impact in the classroom so they can review priorities, iterate the programme and respond to needs.

The most effective leadership of PD requires the use of formative data – from coaching cycles, lesson drop-ins and staff feedback – to identify patterns in teaching strengths and areas for development. This granular insight allows leaders to tailor the PD curriculum and subsequent coaching sessions more precisely, embedding techniques that directly impact curriculum delivery and student learning.

Evaluating the effectiveness of PD on priority groups, such as disadvantaged pupils or those with SEND, ensures that PD has the most impact where it’s needed most. A data-informed approach allows leaders to refine PD content and delivery to better equip teachers to meet all students’ needs.

Leaders in schools and Trusts should consider how subject leads are developed to assure curriculum quality and how to use that data to inform the PD needs of their teams. This ensures PD is subject-specific, nuanced to teacher needs and leads to sustained improvement.

Great teaching is the biggest lever schools have to improve outcomes for all students. But improving teacher expertise and effectiveness requires leaders to invest in a coherent, sustained professional development programme underpinned by their school’s needs and priorities.

• 1.
  PD should have its foundations in and drive school improvement, addressing the most pressing problems identified by leaders.
• 2.
  PD should ensure teachers build relevant pedagogical knowledge and subject expertise, situating rehearsal within their curriculum context.
• 3.
  PD should be iterative – leaders should use formative data to identify patterns and tailor the PD curriculum and subsequent training precisely.

To find out how Steplab can support you to implement an impactful professional development programme in your school or trust, book a demo today.

References

Kennedy, M. (2016). ‘How does professional development improve teaching?’. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 945–980. 

Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15, 4-14.

Sims, S., Fletcher-Wood, H., O’Mara-Eves, A., Cottingham, S., Stansfield, C., Van Herwegen, J., Anders, J., (2021) What are the characteristics of effective teacher professional development? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Education Endowment Foundation. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/evidence-reviews/teacher-professional-development-characteristics

Sunal DW, Hodges J, Sunal CS, Whitaker KW, Freeman LM, Edwards L, Johnston RA, Odell M(2001). Teaching science in higher education: faculty professional development and barriers to change. 101, 246-257.