Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Article Page Tabs

What is CPD?

Tab1 Body

CPD is a planned, continuous and lifelong process whereby teachers try to develop their personal and professional qualities, and to improve their knowledge, skills and practice, leading to their empowerment, the improvement of their agency and the development of their organisation and their pupils.

Padwad, Amol; Dixit, Krishna (2011) Continuing Professional Development: An Annotated Bibliography. British Council

What is the British Council CPD Framework?

The British Council’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Framework provides all teachers of English with a structure for their development and a large range of resources, courses and opportunities to ensure that they keep developing throughout their teaching careers.

Watch a video to know at which stage you're at.

Why use the framework?

For teachers and teacher trainers

indicates the stages that a teacher of English goes through in a career
provides a single starting place for professional development and pathways for progress
maps development activity to these stages
makes it easier to identify and choose the right development activities for different stages of teachers
is not a linear process, but reflects teachers’ needs to develop new skills

For Ministries of Education, State Governments and other institutions

helps to identify the right development activity for the needs and abilities of particular groups of teachers
covers a wide range of development opportunities
a tool to raise standards of English teaching
flexible to the needs of the local context

CPD Newsletter

CPD Newsletter is aimed at professional development of practicing English language teachers, teacher trainers / educators, administrators and others. It is an invaluable resource updating the key CPD issues relating to educational change and development in the 21st century.

Subscribe Now!

How do you progress?

Tab2 Body

Teachers and teacher educators progress by actively engaging in their own development in four important ways:

by setting goals for their professional development and planning activities to meet those goals
by actively participating in training courses relevant to their needs and stage of development
by learning to access and use the resources that are available for their classroom teaching and personal development
by engaging in networks of other teachers of English

What activity does it consist of?

keeping a CPD diary and plan
carrying out classroom research
taking a training course
participating in or leading workshops and seminars
reading professional magazines, journals and books
using new materials/aids for teacher
observing and working with other teachers

Using the Framework

Tab3 Body

We can help you use the framework to:

identify the right training and development for your teachers of English
deliver courses in partnership
develop a CPD programme for your teachers of English that will help raise standards in your schools

Through the framework, you can also identify ways to help teachers develop their professional behaviours in the main areas of English language teaching:

planning lessons and courses
understanding learners
conducting the lesson
evaluating and assessing learning
knowing the subject
managing professional development

British Council CPD Framework for teachers of English - the stages

1 Starting	You are a trainee teacher of English taking initial training or you are not qualified as an English teacher but working as one.
2 Newly-qualified	You are a qualified teacher of English in your first two years of practice, who is putting initial training into practice.
3 Developing	You are a practising qualified teacher of English with more than two years of experience, and still want to consolidate your essential skills.
4 Proficient	You are an experienced qualified teacher of English with strong all-round knowledge and competence as a teacher.
5 Advanced	You are a highly experienced qualified teacher, who comfortably takes on leading roles, such as mentoring, and may be planning to develop more specialist skills.
6 Specialist	You are a practising specialist, such as a teacher trainer, materials writer, syllabus & curriculum developer, head of department/manager, testing expert, adviser on ELT issues (primary, secondary, vocational etc.), researcher.

Courses for adults

English courses for young learners

English courses for the workplace

General English exams (Cambridge ESOL)

Teach English

Digital learning resources

British Council

India

Primary menu

Menu primary 2