Now that support staff have received detailed information about the full package of terms and conditions for the Modern Reward Strategy, schools are eager to ensure all their staff receive appropriate professional development. This includes training and development for the whole school team and effective staff deployment.

To help, schools should find the following information useful;

National Occupational Standards for Supporting Teaching and Learning
New national occupational standards have been developed to provide a foundation to work from which can be used for recruitment, development and progression of school support staff. The standards describe what support staff need to do, know and understand based on the roles and responsibilities of support staff in today's schools. They are aligned with national expectations and qualifications to help develop the capacity and capability of the whole school team. The standards make the job of managing and developing support staff easier and more effective.

A key tool in the guidance is the unit selection tool. This tools enables you to produce a list of the standards that apply to any particular job role. This list can be used to agree the responsibilities of a role as well as providing information on units to complete to achieve a NVQ.

The national occupational standards online guidance can be found at www.tda.gov.uk/nos.

TDA Website - Support Staff Development
The TDA website www.tda.gov.uk/developsupport brings together a range of resources and programmes to faciliate training and development for support staff. The TDA have identified five key stages for support staff development;

1.	Auditing your school's support staff needs
2.	Recruiting staff with the right skills
3.	Inducting your support staff
4.	Training and developing staff skills and experience
5.	Giving your staff opportunities to progress in their careers.

Case studies demonstrating the benefits of support staff development can also be found.

Norfolk's Website for Training and Development of School Support Staff - www.schools.norfolk.gov.uk/go/supportstaff.
Our website gives detailed information on training and development opportunties provided by the Local Authority. Details of our current programme of training to support teaching and learning can be found alongside local case studies, Norfolk's Framework for School Support Staff, a Whats new section and a PowerPoint presentation on CPD for the Whole School Workforce. We continue to support our core-training programme of professional development activities for teaching assistants. This programme is planned to meet the needs of teaching assistants at differing levels of experience and expertise.

Framework for School Support Staff
The framework was created to help schools and individuals consider the training and development options for support staff in light of remodelling the workforce and extended services. Copies can be found on our website.

National Body to Deal with Pay, Terms & Conditions for School Support Staff
The Support Staff Working Group (SSWG) is continuing its work to establish the foundations and mechanics of the new School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB). It is important, however to be very clear that there is a long way to go before employers and employees will need to make any adjustments to their existing working arrangements.

Helping support staff to become even more professional and work even more as part of a fully integrated school workforce enables schools and, most importantly, their pupils to perform better and achieve better results. It continues to be our policy to maintain appropriate support to enable schools and their staff to access continued professional development for the whole school team.

If you have any queries on School Workforce Development please email
workforce.development@norfolk.gov.uk.
Or contact Denise Beckett, Training and Development Coordinator, 01603 222743.