Principles of Professional Learning

Teachers collaborating to share best practice is a core principle of professional learning at Imberhorne School. Research and enquiry into our own practice is a key part of learning and pathways provide opportunities for teachers to come together to learn, reflect and share.

The majority of professional development for staff at Imberhorne takes place on Mondays after school, in sessions from 3.30 - 5.00pm. Many of these Monday slots are devoted to development within departments, and might include activities such as: sharing ideas for planning schemes of work, embedding excellent teaching into practice, sharing subject specific pedagogy, moderating and sharing excellent assessments practices.

Our cross-curricular groups come together on at least six occasions over the year to focus on an area of teaching and learning. The first half of these sessions centre around sharing research and best-practice and then the discussion and sharing of ideas. Colleagues pair up and plan their observations of each other. The second half of the session is devoted to planning when and how the new idea or concepts can be trialled in lesson time and how impact can be measured. 

In addition, there are professional learning sessions for leadership development at all levels and also for teachers who have additional reasonability to lead teaching in a specific area.

Finally, we are proud to work with our Mid Sussex Federation partner schools to offer professional development programmes with colleagues across four schools (Imberhorne, Sackville, Oathall and Downlands), ensuring that we are not only sharing best-practice across our own institution, but they we also actively engage outside of it too.