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.

To understand the disconnect, we must move past simple evaluation models that ask lecturers to rate a training session or add a comment. A positive survey response does not guarantee authentic engagement; it may simply reflect someone who is ‘playing the game’. Instead, we need to look closer at how lecturers internally navigate these experiences.

When top-down professional development focuses too heavily on institutional compliance, friction occurs. Lecturers may be in the room, but are they really engaged? Often, they perform the script of the ‘good employee’ by attending and taking part on a surface level but internally feel like they are involved in something which is a waste of valuable time.

As anyone in FE knows, time is a rare and precious commodity not to be wasted. This performance often forces a divide between the institutional compliance managers expect, and the authentic, fast-moving industry knowledge that vocational teachers need to keep ‘in motion’ to prevent their expertise from expiring. When professional development becomes synonymous with surveillance, it risks stripping lecturers of their professional judgement and genuine agency as industry professionals.

If FE leaders want to move away from passive compliance, the conversation around CPD needs to be reframed. We need to stop evaluating professional development by numbers on a register or superficial survey scores and comments. Instead, leaders need to understand the ‘symbolic filters’ through which lecturers view these initiatives.

True, professional growth cannot be mandated or monitored through an external script; it occurs when institutions respect the expertise of their staff and create spaces where bottom-up, self-sought professional learning is genuinely valued alongside institutional and policy requirements.

By designing CPD strategies that align with lecturers’ authentic realities rather than imposing rigid top-down structures, leaders can build a culture where professional development is not just attended but deeply valued.  Only then can we hope to realise the true potential of the white paper’s reforms and build a teaching culture rooted in genuine excellence rather than performance.”