You've got to make decisions at some time or other. The Authority has a policy that it doesn't fund things like Chartered Teacher. It will fund some forms of certificated course. For example, what used to be the Guidance Certificate Course. That has traditionally been funded by the Authority, because it's been an implied condition that if someone didn't have it they would undertake it if they were appointed to a pupil support post. Additional support needs; the same, linking into Aberdeen University - the Aberdeen University programme there - for Local Authority support staff. But, apart from that most of the staff development budget is devolved into schools. They can purchase what they like. We tend to, if we can, I mean I spoke about that assertive discipline in-service day that we ran. If we can, we run that sort of thing on a cluster basis. We would invite the primary schools in our cluster to come in with us, and one did that last day. That worked quite well.
We started with our own version when it wasn't clear what people were going to classify as CPD. Basically, I had a look at it and decided this would go and that would go and the next thing. We made sure there were things like reading included. I think it's very important that staff are encouraged, as I say, even if it's only the Times Educational Supplement. But, I mean, it's a whole range of things like that, that staff can spend very, very valuable time reading. So, we made up a list and since that there's been various developing versions of the portfolio. One of the things I find about it is that it's virtually impossible to set a plan in place at one moment in time for the simple reason that things change; people's views change; opportunities come up; things develop; things happen in school; things need to be addressed and you've got to keep a flexibility. So, the approach I take is that certainly as far as the contractual 35 hours is concerned, as long as people are logging that; they can account for that, I wouldn't necessarily expect that that is planned meticulously beforehand.
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