Too much CPD in FE is simply performative

For many lecturers in FE, the phrase ‘CPD’ (career professional development) triggers a familiar mental script. Images of packed rooms, PowerPoints on the latest Ofsted developments and a sign in sheet making its way across the desks. All too often, continued professional development is treated by institutions as a mechanical, top-down delivery tool, a means to ensure that national policy mandates or inspection framework knowledge is visibly demonstrated, regardless of whether any real learning happened.

Yet, as a long-standing lecturer and doctoral researcher in FE, I have often wondered about the hidden costs of this compliance driven approach. What happens to teacher identity when professional development is reduced to a performance? Why do activities which are meant to develop growth end up feeling like a tick box exercise? This tension is exacerbated by a historical lack of sector specific research, meaning FE CPD is frequently dictated by models that do not fit our landscape.

This is a critical moment to be asking these questions. The government’s Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper explicitly promises to raise standards in teaching and learning and deliver high-quality teaching across a prestigious further education system. It is an admirable goal, but policymakers and college leaders must face a difficult truth; we cannot mandate this high-quality teaching through low-quality, top-down compliance systems. If the sector is to successfully deliver on these ambitious national reforms, the way we support and develop our teaching workforce must fundamentally change. Under the current system, the very mechanism meant to drive quality is instead driving exhaustion.