The CPD Exchange 2026: Tailoring PD to School Needs (Event Recordings)
- Last Updated: 15th July, 2026
The CPD Exchange 2026 was a blast! In one day we unpacked four incredible talks with Andy Newell opening with a thought-leadership session on tailoring PD to school context, followed by three school leaders sharing what’s genuinely working in their settings. Then in the afternoon: three teams of delegates built real CPD pathways from scratch in the room and presented them to the group.
It was our first ever CPD Design Lab and it won’t be our last.
Every session and every presentation was recorded and can be found bellow.
Jump Straight to your Desired Session
- Tailoring PD to School Needs – Andy Newell
- From Good to Outstanding: Our Journey to Exceptional Teaching – Naomi Gillinson
- The Empowerment Paradox: Building Agency Without Losing Accountability – Lou Elliot & Matt Smith
- Seeing What Matters: AI‑Supported Reflective Practice at Trust Scale – Guy Carpenter
Tailoring PD to School Needs - Andy Newell
In this session from The CPD Exchange 2026, Andy Newell, Managing Director at IRIS Connect, explores the tension at the heart of modern PD: how the push for technique-led teaching, while valuable, risks creating routine expertise rather than the adaptive expertise schools actually need.
Drawing on cognitive science, habit formation, and research from Schwartz and Bransford, Andy unpacks what it really means to bridge the gap between theory and practice. He makes the case for PD programmes that combine behavioural rehearsal with structured opportunities for reflection and contextual adaptation, keeping teachers thinking, not just responding on autopilot.
Andy also introduces how IRIS Connect’s platform is designed with this balance in mind: adaptable Pathways, school-built learning content, and AI Insights that prompt deeper reflection, all tailored to the context and needs of your school community.
From Good to Outstanding: Our Journey to Exceptional Teaching - Naomi Gillinson
What does it take to transform a school that was once on the brink of closure into one of the most sought-after in the capital?
In this session from The CPD Exchange 2026, Naomi Gillinson, Assistant Headteacher at All Saints Catholic College in Ladbroke Grove, London, shares the honest story of her school’s ongoing journey: not a finished transformation, but a deliberate, reflective process of improvement rooted in the belief that belonging comes before learning.
With 40% pupil premium, over 20% SEN, and a community facing significant challenges, All Saints built its approach from the ground up, starting with culture. Naomi explains how the school identified and supported “hidden students,” those quiet, compliant pupils who are often overlooked, and how investing in relationships outside the classroom has driven real gains inside it.
The session also covers the practical structures that have made a difference: a shared instructional coaching model, live in-lesson feedback replacing retrospective marking, department-level collaboration focused on specific student groups, and an innovative Academic Support Assistant programme placing subject-specialist graduates in classrooms to strengthen adaptive teaching.
The Empowerment Paradox: Building Agency Without Losing Accountability - Lou Elliot & Matt Smith
Should teachers be held accountable for their development, or should they own it themselves? Lou Elliott and Matt Smith from Danecourt School say: it’s the wrong question. Their workshop at The CPD Exchange 2026 tackled the real tension: moving from a culture of “done to” towards one of “done with.” Five years of honest, sometimes difficult work. A bespoke coaching pathway built around teacher agency. And evidence that it actually changes how staff feel about professional learning.
Central to their approach is asking better questions before designing any CPD: are we changing skills or adding knowledge? Do we presume competence or incompetence? The answers shape everything. In practice, that means building in peer review and coaching with clear structure and genuine next steps, so that each observation cycle doesn’t end with feedback, it continues with an action step that is revisited until the skill is genuinely embedded into practice.
Seeing What Matters: AI‑Supported Reflective Practice at Trust Scale - Guy Carpenter
What does reflective practice actually look like at trust scale? Guy Carpenter at Dudley Academies Trust has spent years trying to answer that. His answer involves AI, and it’s working.
At The CPD Exchange 2026, Guy shared how Dudley Academies Trust is embedding AI-assisted reflection into teacher development across multiple schools, not as a gimmick, but as a genuine tool for helping teachers notice what they’d otherwise miss. The road to get there was not straightforward. Bringing all stakeholders along, establishing the right guardrails, and maintaining trust required sustained effort. One insight anchored the whole journey: the Trust’s digital strategy was not an IT project, it was a cultural project. That reframe changed the conversation entirely, shifting the focus from what the technology does to what problem it is actually there to solve.
At the heart of Guy’s message was a challenge to stop persisting with approaches that have always been done but are not delivering the desired impact, and to ask instead: what are we actually trying to achieve? Traditional observation cycles, where feedback arrives too late to change practice and is never revisited, are a clear example. The result at Dudley is a reflection process that is iterative and timely, where each cycle builds on the last until the learning translates into practice.
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