EDT selected as lead provider for National Professional Qualifications in England

31 March 2021

We are delighted to announce that Education Development Trust has been selected as a lead provider for the reformed National Professional Qualifications in England.

Teacher quality is the biggest determinant of pupil outcomes, making professional development for educators a key means of improving education standards and outcomes for children and young people. National Professional Qualifications (NPQs), a national, voluntary suite of qualifications, are therefore designed to support the professional development of teachers and education leaders, and have recently been reformed to enhance their effectiveness in developing teachers’ and leaders’ practice.

Education Development Trust will be delivering the reformed suite of NPQs by leading a consortium, in which we will be partnering with the Sheffield Institute of Education and Evidence Based Education. In this consortium, we will combine our extensive experience of delivering teacher and leader professional development on a national scale with the best sector expertise and insights from internationally recognised experts in professional learning.

Professor Samantha Twiselton, OBE, Director of the Sheffield Institute of Education, commented: 

“As both a partner in EdDevTrust’s NPQ programme and someone who has been heavily involved in helping shape the evolving policy landscape for teacher and school leadership development, I’m so excited that this milestone has been achieved. We live in exciting times and the combination of the revised and brand new specialist NPQs are a key part of this. They will help bring a coherence and focus to the ways in which we need to develop and create career pathways for the teaching profession.”

The new reforms, which stem from the Department for Education, mean that all educators in England will undertake professional development activities from the same evidence-based framework. This framework has a strong focus on equipping educators with the knowledge and skills they need to perform their jobs well on a daily basis, and now includes more specialist routes for teachers and leaders to develop specific areas of their practice. 

As effective leadership is second only to teacher quality in determining pupil outcomes, our work though the suite of NPQ qualifications will seek to improve the effectiveness of leaders, creating the conditions for change and embedding expertise about effective teaching at the leadership level.

“This suite of NPQs will create clear development pathways that are fit for the evolving leadership needs of our education system,” explained Professor Stuart Kime, Director of Education at Evidence Based Education. “The team at Evidence Based Education is excited to work in partnership with Education Development Trust: bringing these qualifications to life helps us continue our mission to support educators in using the best available evidence to improve teaching, leadership and – crucially – learner outcomes.”

Matt Davis, Regional Director for UK programmes at Education Development Trust, also commented. “We know that effective leadership plays a vital part in improving attainment in schools and tackling disadvantage, so we are delighted to be joining the reformed NPQs framework. It allows us to further deepen our relationships with our school Delivery Partners where we can work together to offer exceptional professional development in their areas, using local practitioners to ensure high quality within a local context."

We will be working with Delivery Partners across England to deliver our NPQ programmes in their local areas. 

If you would like to learn more about our school delivery network, then please email us at UKPartners@educationdevelopmenttrust.com