At Academy Transformation Trust (ATT), we believe in a simple but powerful truth: that the highest quality educational experiences for young people are made possible by empowering the adults who work with them. Our staff development strategy is not an add-on or an afterthought—it sits at the heart of our improvement journey, driven by the ATT Institute.

Through innovative, inclusive, and impactful professional development (PD), the Institute serves as the fuel for school improvement across our 22 academies. By offering tailored support for every role we ensure everyone has the tools and confidence to thrive. This blog explores how the ATT Institute delivers excellence in staff development, through a culture of collaboration, evidence-informed practice, and sustainable leadership. Alongside this, we hear directly from those at the forefront of this transformation.

Driving Improvement Through Development

At the heart of our approach is a clear vision: to transform life chances through sustainable, effective, and inspiring academies. We know this cannot be achieved without investing in the development of our people.

The ATT Institute leads this work, creating and coordinating the professional development offer across the Trust. It does so by aligning PD with a unique role-categorisation model: Leading, Delivering, Enabling and Supporting Education. This approach ensures all staff—whatever their role—receive development opportunities that are contextually relevant, role-specific, and practically useful.

Professional development is never ‘done to’ our staff. It is co-constructed, embedded in context, and underpinned by high-quality evidence. The result is a system in which everyone has a part to play in driving academy improvement.

Collaboration That Connects and Elevates

One of the most impactful features of our PD model is our Trust-wide professional communities. These communities include a diverse range of colleagues from across the “Leading”, “Delivering”, “Supporting” and “Enabling Education” groups. These communities create a rich culture of horizontal improvement, where ideas, challenges, and best practice are shared openly.

Communities operate within structured schedules that respect staff workload while promoting purposeful engagement. Community leads collaborate across academies, supported by Trust and Institute leaders, ensuring alignment in improvement priorities and mutual support in implementation.

Each academy has a Professional Development lead who liaises closely with the Institute team. These leads play a vital role in contextualising Trust-wide strategies, maintaining momentum, and promoting whole-academy consistency in a way that is responsive and sustainable.

Jack Dean

Testimonial: Jack Dean

Assistant Principal, Pool Hayes Academy

“As the Professional Development lead for Pool Hayes Academy, my role involves collaborating and contributing to the ATTI PD strategy alongside the leads from other academies. Whilst ensuring that research, principles and mechanisms are cascaded and contextualised successfully to our staff at the ‘coal face’ of teaching: a task critical for developing staff and ultimately our student outcomes.

Currently, our focus at Pool Hayes is the implementation of the Pedagogical Principles to ensure that every child in every ATT academy receives the same high level of educational ‘best bets’ based on rigorous academic foundations. This has not been a set of directives, but as a community the PD Leads have spent significant time co-constructing these principles, before trialling them in our own academies and feeding back to the wider group. This attitude of collaboration is fundamental to the work of ATTI and is but one example of how Cat, Katie and the wider Trust support us with developing our staff professionally.

This year at Pool Hayes, we have led a big drive on bespoke PD sessions linked to the developmental needs of staff. These Pathway sessions were designed following the model of NPQ delivery, as supported by ATTI, and have seen staff choose between Whole-academy Leadership; Area Leadership; PHAntastic Teaching; ECT support and Maximising Impact for our Teaching Assistants. Staff feedback, increased applications for NPQ programmes and the impact on our learners in and outside of the classroom are early indicators that we have contextualised the knowledge built through the PD community into a successful model for our staff. The Maximising TA Impact has been developed by the wonderful Abi Joachim and the wider programme is being cascaded out to the wider Trust following the successes at Pool Hayes.

Another key focus for Pool Hayes is the development of our Instructional Coaching programme, which is set to see all teaching members of staff begin their coaching journeys in the Autumn term. This has relied on foundational knowledge being delivered to staff and this term has seen the entire staff body engage fantastically with the mechanisms of group rehearsal and deliberate practice in preparation for instructional coaching. We have a group of staff who have been trained throughout the year to lead on our coaching—a process supported in particular by Katie at ATTI, yet always with the context of Pool Hayes at the forefront of thinking.

Being a PD Lead is not working in isolation but is a task of collaboration to ensure the fundamental strategy is rooted in rigour and ‘best bets’, before contextualising this in our own schools to ensure successful implementation. As Dylan Wiliam famously noted: ‘Everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere,’ but with the support of ATTI and the wider Trust, the future of staff development is an exciting one!”

Empowering Through Evidence and Expertise

The Institute also supports a wide-ranging PD offer, from on-demand courses and role-specific training to live webinars and pedagogical workshops. Our academy PD Leads play a key role in helping colleagues navigate this offer, ensuring their engagement is both meaningful and manageable.

For colleagues beyond the teaching roles, the Institute has developed innovative programmes such as:

Leadership that Inspires and Sustains

Leadership development is another area where the ATT Institute excels. We offer a range of pathways that support colleagues at every stage of their leadership journey, from aspiring leads to senior executives.

Highlights include:

  • Transformational Leaders: A unique and highly rated programme combining leadership style analysis, immersive residential experiences, and leadership coaching.
  • Leadership Coaching: A Trust-wide offer for new leaders, including those in support and non-education roles.

These programmes are not just about career progression—they’re about growing a leadership culture rooted in empathy, evidence, and effectiveness

Charlene Osmond

Testimonial: Charlene Osmond

PD Lead, Kingsmoor Primary Academy

“Since taking on the role of PD Lead in September 2024, it has been great to see how much work and dedication goes into our Professional Development not only throughout ATT but particularly at Kingsmoor Academy. During our PD community meetings, it is lovely to come together to develop and share our ideas and thoughts of what is working well within our schools and areas we can develop to enrich staff with the knowledge and practice to continue to be outstanding practitioners.

In addition, developing our Professional Development Curriculum Plan alongside our principal Angie Skinner and executive principal Angela Lymbouris has allowed us to really pinpoint the areas of practice we need to refine. Our newly launched Trust-wide Pedagogical Principles mean that, looking towards 2025–2026, we can now use these principles along with the specific steps on Steplab to see where our priorities will lie next academic year.

As a new PD Lead, it has been amazing during 2024–2025 to develop my confidence and utilise the skills of our Director of Institute, Cat Rushton. Cat has launched group rehearsal with our staff and focused on the importance of both group rehearsal and deliberate practice—particularly in the ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach, as well as ‘right is right’. This has been a success within our academy and allowed staff to become more confident with using these approaches within the classroom.

It has become evident this academic year that staff realise quality Professional Development helps them adopt evidence-based pedagogy. This inevitably improves outcomes for our pupils, who are, of course, at the centre of everything we do at Kingsmoor Academy.”

Evidencing Impact

The ripple effect of the Institute’s work is visible in every aspect of our Trust. It is reflected in our inspection outcomes, such as:

  • “The Trust Institute ensures all staff have access to training and support. This means staff have the knowledge they need to deliver the curriculum effectively.” – Great Heath Academy, Jan 2024
  • “Staff develop their knowledge through the wide-ranging programme of professional communities.” – Ravens Academy, Feb 2024
  • “Trust leaders provide a bespoke range of professional development for staff. Staff appreciate the regard by leaders for their workload and well-being.” – Hathaway Academy, Jun 2024

It is echoed in blogs and case studies from staff, highlighting journeys of progression, leadership development, and renewed confidence. And it is confirmed in large-scale staff voice surveys with common themes such as:

  • High value placed on skill-building and collaboration through the Institute.
  • Clear links between PD and improved confidence and autonomy.
  • Widespread appreciation for role-specific support and progression pathways.

The Road Ahead

Looking ahead, the ATT Institute will continue to evolve to meet the needs of our staff and students. But our principles remain the same: professional development must be innovative, inclusive, and impactful – tailored to individual needs, rooted in collaboration, and grounded in evidence of what truly works.

Delivering Excellence in Staff Development: The ATT Institute Way

by Cat Rushton, Director of ATT Institute