Education and training services

Tender description

Several contracts have been awarded to establish Practice Development Groups (PDGs) in nine regions across England. This new ETF programme was designed to promote practitioner-led, collaborative professional development across the Further Education and Training sector. PDGs consist of action learning sets of practitioners who work together on a short-term, small-scale project to improve an aspect of their teaching, learning and assessment over a 4-month period. Each successful tenderer is running two rounds of PDG’s per academic year (October — January and January – April). The appointed tenderers act as hubs for 8-10 groups (4-5 per round) with group facilitators supporting participants in running action learning sets. The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) awarded 7 contracts to successful tenderers to lead Professional Development Groups (PDGs). Improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in maths and English is a high priority for the Department for Education (DfE) and the ETF and the PDGs have been designed to complement ETF’s wider maths and English offer. Participants of PDGs are able to seek to develop an aspect of teaching, learning and assessment to enhance their teaching of English or their embedding of maths or English into other programmes of study.