Making TPL Funding Count: Beyond One-Off Training Days
- Last updated: 17th August, 2026
Northern Ireland’s new Teacher Professional Learning (TPL) Fund is a rare opportunity.
Through TransformED, the Department of Education has committed to sustained investment in professional learning between 2025 and 2028, with a clear purpose: to enhance teacher effectiveness and improve pupil outcomes.
The guidance is explicit. Professional development is not an optional extra. It is a key driver of school improvement, staff retention and pupil attainment.
The funding is significant. The responsibility is even greater.
The risk: spending quickly, not strategically
For many schools, the immediate temptation is understandable. Book a high-profile speaker. Send staff to a conference. Deliver a powerful training day.
Yet the TPL guidance is clear that not all professional development is equally effective. It distinguishes between indirect professional development, such as conferences or awareness-raising sessions, and direct professional development that explicitly seeks to improve pupil outcomes.
Research from the Education Endowment Foundation reinforces this. Effective professional development is sustained, iterative and focused on improving classroom practice over time. One-off sessions, however inspiring, rarely lead to lasting change.
If TPL funding is spent predominantly on isolated events, its impact is likely to be short-lived.
What the research actually says works
The Department’s guidance outlines four core characteristics of effective professional development:
Rising expectations and the limits of school-led CPD
1. Relevant and reflective
Professional learning must be explicitly linked to pupil outcomes and provide structured opportunities for teachers to reflect on and adapt their practice.
2. Evidence-based
It should draw on robust research, develop theory alongside practice and be supported by expertise that challenges existing beliefs.
3. Collaborative with expert challenge
Effective programmes build in peer support, focused discussion and coaching or mentoring to provide modelling and challenge.
4. Sustained over time
Professional development should form part of a coherent programme lasting at least two terms, creating a rhythm of practice, feedback and refinement.
These principles align closely with wider research, including the EEF’s Effective Professional Development guidance, which emphasises feedback, rehearsal, coaching and follow-up as essential mechanisms for changing classroom practice.
In short, improvement is not an event. It is a structured process.
A three-year window for real culture change
The TPL Fund has been designed as a three-year cycle precisely to enable strategic planning, implementation and evaluation. Schools are required to submit a TPL Strategy Statement linking professional learning directly to school improvement goals and expected impact on teaching and pupil outcomes.
This is more than a funding exercise. It is an invitation to rethink culture.
In conversations with school leaders across Northern Ireland, a common theme emerges. In some contexts, professional learning has historically felt compliance-driven. Lesson observation has been associated with monitoring rather than growth. Classrooms have felt closed.
The TPL guidance warns that appraisal and monitoring systems should not undermine trust or generate excessive workload, as this can impede effective professional development. Instead, leaders are encouraged to create the conditions where professional learning can thrive: space, time, culture and trust.
Schools that are making progress are phasing change carefully. Senior leaders model openness first. Small pilot groups build confidence. Coaching conversations focus on specific priorities such as questioning, literacy or curriculum design. Professional dialogue becomes normal, not threatening.
This is direct professional development in action.
Designing TPL that stands up to scrutiny
The reporting framework requires schools to evidence changes in teaching practice and pupil outcomes. That means leaders must ask from the outset:
- What precise classroom practices are we trying to improve?
- How will teachers receive feedback and coaching?
- How will we know whether pupil outcomes have shifted?
- How will this programme be sustained beyond a single term?
If those questions cannot be answered clearly, the investment may not deliver value for money.
A rare moment. A strategic choice.
Northern Ireland schools now have dedicated funding to invest seriously in teacher professional learning. The research is clear. Sustained, collaborative, evidence-informed programmes change practice. One-off events rarely do.
The real opportunity is not to spend the money quickly. It is to build a professional learning culture that lasts well beyond 2028.
If you want practical insight into how to move beyond one-off training days and use your TPL funding strategically, watch our webinar:
Making TPL Funding Count: Beyond One-Off Training Days >
Hear from Ashleigh Thomson, Vice Principal at Bloomfield Collegiate School, as she shares how her school is building psychological safety, embedding ongoing professional learning and aligning TPL investment with long-term improvement.
This funding window will not last forever. The impact of how you use it can.
Read more information on how IRIS Connect can help meet TPL requirements and improve teaching across your school.
For over 17 years, IRIS Connect has partnered with schools to deliver professional learning grounded in robust research and proven practice. As policies and priorities evolve, our focus remains the same: supporting approaches that make a meaningful difference to teachers and pupils.
Our platform brings together instructional coaching, structured reflection and collaborative professional development in one evidence informed solution. Leaders can personalise development, align it with whole school priorities and monitor progress, while teachers feel supported, empowered and professionally valued.
With bespoke solutions and ready to use resources, IRIS Connect helps schools build a culture of continuous improvement that drives lasting impact.
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