Teacher training may be an essential component of an educator’s professional development, but our annual State of Technology in Education research shows how widely this varies in practice. We’ve tracked how the national consensus shifts each year, as well as how satisfaction differs between teachers, IT managers and school leaders.
This analysis reveals how well the training on offer serves school priorities and the educators themselves, and what they need more of. So what story does the data tell about the training experience of schools regionally? Here’s how training compares between each region, and which areas of the country are leading the way.
Take a look at the trends:
- Training priorities
- The amount of tech training
- Teacher training funding
- Allocation of teacher training budget
Training priorities
Student safeguarding is almost universally the highest training priority, and remote learning platforms are primarily the lowest. Schools are committed to keeping educators on top of student safety, but attribute less focus to the solutions that facilitate learning outside the classroom.
An outlier from this trend, Scotland instead prioritises educators’ professional development and career progression (27%) – the lowest priority for Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South West and West Midlands. Ireland, meanwhile, bucks the trend of neglecting in-class edtech training (24%), enabling educators to make the most of these investments. Wales is the only region to prioritise curriculum and government-led changes above everything else (41%).
To ensure staff buy-in of your school’s training priorities, it’s crucial to field opinions from across job roles when creating your strategy. It’s also important to devote attention not just to perennial concerns like safeguarding, but to ensure training responds to changing student needs, such as social-emotional learning.
The amount of tech training
Educators in every region in the United Kingdom – apart from Wales, the most satisfied region with 48% reporting adequate tech training – said they receive some technology training but feel more could be done. North East England and the Republic of Ireland have the furthest to go, with only around one1 in 10 educators receiving full tech training and the highest proportions reporting none at all (15% and 17% respectively). London is the frontrunner, with the highest proportion reporting full tech training (22%) and the lowest proportion receiving none (4%).
When more teacher training is available, educators are better positioned to maximise the value and ROI of edtech investments, and teachers’ productivity and student learning outcomes improve.
Teacher training funding
Teacher training is a funding priority for most regions, and most educators recognise it as a valuable way of preparing school staff to cater to their own and their students’ needs. Scotland is the only area where the majority of educators don’t believe this to be the case, with 52% reporting it’s not a funding priority in their school strategy. There’s no clear consensus in the Republic of Ireland, where 50% of educators believe it is a funding priority.
The best way to set up teacher training to maximise educators’ productivity and the quality of instruction is by committing budget at the strategic level. Without this, it can become an ad-hoc, reactive solution, signalling a lack of care to educators.
Allocation of teacher training budget
The majority of the UKI believes their school’s allocation of budget towards teacher training is at the right level. London again expresses the most positivity, with the highest proportion of educators reporting the right level of training budget (52%), and one of the lowest reports of too little (22%). This either suggests those schools have established the best allocation of their school budget or that the distribution of national education funding benefits schools in the capital the most. Wales has the most complaints of inadequate budget, with 41% saying it’s too little, while the West Midlands has the greatest concern of investment in the wrong things (24%).