Bryan Slater Director of Education	Distribution
	All Norfolk schools

This document needs your action as detailed below:

ACTION	Title	CPD Website
	Summary of contents	Details of a new website to help teachers in the first five years of their career. Details of LEA network meetings to introduce the website.
	Associated documents
	Date	1^st October 2004
	Summary of action required	To bring this website to the attention of your CPD Co-ordinator and to book places at the network meetings.
	To be completed by	10^th December 2004
	LEA Contact	Heather Tyrrell	(	01603 433276
	E-mail address	heather.tyrrell@norfolk.gov.uk
	Norfolk Self Review reference	3. How well are pupils taught? 7. How well is the school led and managed? 8. How well does the school use its resources?
	Document reference	MI 183/04

Dear Headteacher,

Launch of DfES Professional and Career Development website

In September, the DfES launched a new website to help teachers in the first five years of their career identify, plan and record the outcomes from a wide range of professional and career development activities. Norfolk County Council encourages all its staff to continue to develop their professional skills throughout their working lives. This website provides online tools to help teachers do this effectively and should be a valuable addition to the school’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Strategy.

Many schools have already begun to develop their own systems to enable teachers to keep a record of their professional development, from induction as an NQT to threshold stage and beyond. These systems often work well, and schools may well wish to continue to use them. This new website provides some significant additional benefits, however, which may encourage schools, and individual teachers, to make the change.

The most significant benefit is that the site enables teachers to keep a record of all their career and professional development activities in one place, in a system that can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet. This record of professional development activity will, therefore, be cumulative throughout a teacher’s career and will ‘follow’ the teacher, no matter where they are employed. The DfES plans to extend the use of the system beyond the first five years, and to extend its use to a wider range of school roles, including Learning Support Assistants.

Schools can visit the website at http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/development/ and there is also a link from the School Staff Zone on Norfolk EsiNet.

I hope that you will encourage your staff to visit and try the site during this term. There will be an opportunity for CPD co-ordinators and teachers to find out more about the site and its facilities at two LEA CPD network meetings to be held at the beginning of next term as follows:

Ref: 4RN 087

Monday 10^th January 2005 West Norfolk Professional Development Centre

Ref: 4RN088

Wednesday 12^th January 2005 Norwich Professional Development Centre

Both sessions will start at 4.15 p.m. (refreshments available from 3.45 p.m.) and will last for approximately one and a half hours. Please book a place for your CPD co-ordinator online at:

http://advisoryserviceactive.norfolk.gov.uk/inset

Please note that there is no charge to schools for these meetings.

I hope this is clear and that you will find the facilities offered by the site make a worthwhile addition to your CPD strategy. If you have questions or need further information please don’t hesitate to contact Heather Tyrrell (Senior Adviser) or David Orsborne (Principal Adviser) at the Norwich Professional Development Centre on 01603 433276, email Heather.Tyrrell@norfolk.gov.uk or David.Orsborne@norfolk.gov.uk, and they will be pleased to try and help.

Yours faithfully,