Norbury Manor Girls' High School

We have been a Training School at Norbury Manor since September 2003, this is our fifth year

At the start Training School status was focused on initial teacher education. For many years NMBEC had been providing high quality trainee teacher placements and this status enabled us to develop this role.

We now take PGCE beginning teachers (BTs) in all subject areas and work closely with the Institute of Education, Goldsmiths College and SWELTEC. We also work with overseas trained teachers and graduate trainees to undertake school based programmes leading to British Qualified Teacher Status. Over the years we have played a leading role in numerous projects such as "Taste Teach", mentor training and returnees programmes.

Having a large number of trainees in the college brings many benefits. We have an increased number of adults able to work with students in the classroom, our teachers value the new ideas and approaches of the trainees and we are able to recruit excellent teachers to our staff.

A recent initiative has been to train students to observe lessons and feedback to teachers and BTs. We now have a team who regularly observe and feedback to BTs who have found this to be extremely useful.

In recent years our work as a Training School has also focused on the Continuing Professional Development of all staff. We believe all staff are learners alongside the students and we can all develop our skills further. This is linked closely to the performance management process and the college development plan.

As an Investors in People school we involve all staff in training. We have taken every opportunity for our support staff groups to access appropriate training, for example our catering team have had certificated Food Hygiene training recently and site staff have had COSH training. There has been considerable investment in IT equipment and training for staff linked to our development as a "Business and Enterprise" college. Over recent years the staff have been involved in action research projects in the classroom focused on improving teaching and learning. Staff have written up their projects and achieved Teacher Learning Academy awards from the GTC. We are now a TLA support and verification centre.

We have also introduced a school based MA programme and our first cohort of staff have now achieved their degrees at St Mary's university. They have worked together as a group in school and their research projects have had a direct impact on the work and development of the school.

We are currently involved in a TDA project "Effective practices in CPD" focusing on developing ways of measuring the impact of CPD on teaching and learning. This project is involving working with classroom support staff and teachers in their early years alongside our current co coaching programme.

Contact: Cynthia Francis, Deputy Headteacher

Tel: 0208 679 0062