There's still a notion that runs through that it's [CPD] about courses. I tend myself to come to it from the angle of process it as school self-evaluation, reflect the professional and to try and bring these two things together. Staff certainly have come on board. We are setting up at the moment - we are working on our Development Plan - we are setting up a programme for next year, which is a very, very diverse programme. We are talking about looking at issues from school aims through to PowerPoint presentations; additional support needs; legislation and procedures - a whole range of things - all ideas that have come from staff, all ideas from things that we've tried to develop in the school involving a whole range of different approaches. Sometimes we might decide that we're going to look at a particular issue; somebody does a starter paper, circulates it to staff; we sit and we discuss it, and we account what this element does and we go with it. Sometimes it might be a matter of taking in someone from outside, someone with a specialist piece of knowledge and getting them to do a session with the staff. Sometimes we, for instance, last week we had an input from, on a whole day basis from Raymond Soltysek, from Strathclyde University, on assertive discipline and that was actually triggered off in a number of different ways. We had discussed the Local Authority's integrated services - children's services planning - for supporting children in this area. We had the officer responsible for that came and did a session with us - CPD session with us. And, following that a couple of members of staff went on an Authority in-service on assertive discipline, came back, spoke to the rest of the staff at a meeting. People said, "Oh, this sounds like a good idea, can we do anything with it?" and we set it up one day - in-service - and brought the chap up. It was very successful. So, we are now going to roll that forward. I've got a meeting actually tomorrow and we're going to try and distil from the one-day what we want to take forward from it.
WMP