Excellence and Enjoyment continuing professional development materials in England: both a bonus and onus for schools

Abstract

Teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) in England is a controversial area, and there is arguably little evidence of a ‘coherent’ framework around which consistently high‐quality CPD has been developed, provided and accessed despite the establishment of the General Teaching Council in 2000, the publication of the CPD Strategy in 2001 by the Department for Education and Employment, and the extension of the Training and Development Agency for Schools’ remit to include CPD in 2005. This paper presents the findings of research commissioned by the Primary National Strategy to evaluate the CPD materials arising from the document Excellence and Enjoyment: A Strategy for the Primary Years. It reports on teachers’ views of the materials and discusses their possible contribution to the development of a systematic and sustainable approach to primary CPD. The paper considers the extent to which the materials are interpreted as encouraging innovation in primary teaching—a bonus—and as requiring high levels of mediation and developmental work in order to access this potential—an onus.