National Professional Qualification
for Leading Teaching (NPQLT)
National Professional Qualification (NPQ): Leading Teacher Development
NPQLT gives candidates all of the essential knowledge, skills and concepts that underpin successful leadership of teaching. The full qualification content can be found in the NPQLT Framework tab where Learn Hows include:
- How to contribute to the creation of a culture of high expectations across the school
- How to support colleagues to plan effective lessons
- How to support colleagues to avoid common assessment pitfalls
- How to encourage colleagues to use high quality, reliable assessment without creating unnecessary workload
What are the benefits?
In recent years, Outstanding Leaders Partnership has grown into a nationwide network of 165 schools, multi-school organisations, dioceses and university partners. The extensive expertise and diversity of our partner network allows us to develop rich, phase-specific, programme content which is delivered and facilitated by local experts in local schools.
Our NPQ candidates benefit from:
- Facilitation and support from serving school leaders in outstanding schools
- Purpose-built virtual learning environment enabled for mobiles and tablets
- Delivery at local venues
- Guaranteed support to pass the final assessment
- Content contextualised for your locality and updated to reflect national developments and legislation
- Regular progress updates for mentors and headteachers
A Blended Learning Experience
NPQLT makes use of a blended delivery model consisting of face-to-face events, online study, webinars and coaching.
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NPQLT candidates will attend 3 face-to-face events if they choose to complete the programme via the blended delivery model. Our nationwide delivery network allows us to bring face-to-face training to a school near you and facilitated by local school leaders.
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Candidates access online learning and support via our virtual learning environment (VLE) Canvas. Through Canvas, candidates are able to engage with their peers, access multimedia content and submit work for assessment.
Online-only Delivery Model
NPQLT candidates can choose to complete the programme via our online delivery model. This delivery model replaces the face-to-face events with facilitated webinars as well as extra tutor support and study packs.
Delivery Outline
Who is this for?
National Professional Qualification for Leading Teaching (NPQLT) – for teachers who have, or are aspiring to have, responsibilities for leading teaching in a subject, year group, key stage or phase.
Leading teaching is complex and professionals looking to lead teaching need to have a deep understanding of their context, community and the pupils and adults they work with. They also need to have expertise across a number of specialist areas related to their role (e.g. curriculum and assessment) and in approaches that, through working with their colleagues, enable their school to keep improving (e.g. professional development and implementation).
Leading teaching requires an understanding of the relationship between the different specialist areas, how they can change over time and how to contribute to a culture and conditions in which staff and pupils are able to thrive, all while maintaining the highest professional conduct as set out in the Teachers’ Standards.
What does it cost?
NPQLT Framework
National Professional Qualification (NPQ): Leading Teaching Framework
school and trust leaders, academics and experts.
The frameworks set out two types of content. Within each area, key evidence statements (“Learn that…”) have been drawn from current high-quality evidence from the UK and
overseas. This evidence includes high-quality reviews and syntheses, including metaanalyses and rigorous individual studies. In addition, the NPQ frameworks provide practical guidance on the skills that teachers and school/trust leaders should be supported to develop. Practice statements (“Learn how to…”) draw on both the best available educational research and on additional guidance from the Expert Advisory Group and other sector representatives.
School Culture
School Culture | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. 2. Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential. 3. Setting clear expectations can help communicate shared values that improve classroom and school culture. 4. Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils. 5. Teachers are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils. 6. Teachers can influence pupils’ resilience and beliefs about their ability to succeed, by ensuring all pupils have the opportunity to experience meaningful success. 7. A culture of mutual trust and respect between colleagues supports effective relationships. |
Contribute to the creation of a culture of high expectations
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How Pupils Learn | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Learning involves a lasting change in pupils’ capabilities 9. Worked examples that take pupils through each step of a |
Explain important ideas about how pupils learn to colleagues, including by: Support colleagues to help pupils learn by: |
Subject and Curriculum | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. A school’s curriculum enables it to set out the knowledge, 8. For pupils to think critically, they must have a secure |
Support colleagues to design a carefully sequenced, broad Support colleagues to develop pupils’ literacy by sharing and modelling approaches that: ● Improve reading comprehension (e.g. modelling prediction, questioning, and summarising when reading). |
Classroom Practice | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Effective teaching can transform pupils’ knowledge, capabilities and beliefs about learning. 2. Effective teachers introduce new material in steps, explicitly linking new ideas to what has been previously studied and learned. 3. Modelling helps pupils understand new processes and ideas; good models make abstract ideas concrete and accessible. 4. Guides, scaffolds and worked examples can help pupils apply new ideas, but should be gradually removed as pupil expertise increases. 5. Explicitly teaching pupils metacognitive strategies linked to subject knowledge, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate, supports independence and academic success. 6. Questioning is an essential tool for teachers; questions can be used for many purposes, including to check pupils’ prior knowledge, assess understanding, and break down problems. 7. High-quality classroom discussion can support pupils to articulate key ideas, consolidate understanding and extend their vocabulary. 8. Practice is an integral part of effective teaching; ensuring pupils have repeated opportunities to practise, with appropriate guidance and support, increases success. 9. Paired and group activities can increase pupil outcomes, but to work together effectively pupils need guidance, support and practice. 10. How pupils are grouped is also important; care should be taken to monitor the impact of groupings on pupil outcomes, behaviour and motivation. 11. Homework can improve pupil outcomes, particularly for older pupils, but it is likely that the quality of homework and its relevance to main class teaching is more important than the amount set. |
Support colleagues to plan effective lessons by: Support colleagues to explain and model effectively by: |
Adaptive Teaching | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. The SEND Code of Practice sets out four areas of need (communication and interaction; cognition and learning; social, emotional and mental health; and physical and/or sensory needs). 2. Pupils are likely to learn at different rates and to require different levels and types of support from teachers to succeed. 3. Seeking to understand pupils’ differences, including their different levels of prior knowledge and potential barriers to learning, is an essential part of teaching. 4. Adapting teaching in a responsive way, including by providing targeted support to pupils who are struggling, is likely to increase pupil outcomes. 5. Adaptive teaching is less likely to be valuable if it causes the teacher to artificially create distinct tasks for different groups of pupils or to set lower expectations for particular pupils. 6. Flexibly grouping pupils within a class to provide more tailored support can be effective, but care should be taken to monitor its impact on engagement and motivation, particularly for low attaining pupils. 7. Pupils with special educational needs or disabilities are likely to require additional or adapted support; working closely with colleagues, families and pupils to understand barriers and identify effective approaches is essential. |
Provide opportunities for all pupils to experience success by: Support colleagues to adapt their teaching to different pupil needs by: Support colleagues to meet individual needs without creating unnecessary workload by: Ensure pupils are grouped effectively (across subjects and within individual classrooms) by: |
Assessment | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Effective assessment is critical to teaching because it provides teachers with information about pupils’ understanding and needs. 2. Good assessment helps teachers avoid being overinfluenced by potentially misleading factors, such as how busy pupils appear. 3. Before using any assessment, teachers should be clear about the decision it will be used to support and be able to justify its use. 4. To be of value, teachers must use information from assessments to inform the decisions they make; in turn, pupils must be able to act on feedback for it to have an effect. 5. High-quality feedback can be written or verbal; it is likely to be accurate and clear, encourage further effort, and provide specific guidance on how to improve. 6. Over time, feedback should support pupils to monitor and regulate their own learning. 7. Working with colleagues to identify efficient approaches to assessment is important; assessment can become onerous and have a disproportionate impact on workload. |
Support colleagues to avoid common assessment pitfalls by:
Support colleagues to provide high-quality feedback by: ● Sharing approaches to peer- and self-assessment that are likely to increase its effectiveness (e.g. by sharing model Encourage colleagues to use high quality, reliable assessment without creating unnecessary workload by: |
Professional Development | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Teaching quality is a crucial factor in raising pupil attainment. 2. Helping teachers improve through evidence-based professional development that is explicitly focused on improving classroom teaching can be a cost-effective way to improve pupils’ academic outcomes when compared with other interventions, and can narrow the disadvantage attainment gap. 3. Effective professional development is likely to involve a lasting change in teachers' capabilities or understanding so that their teaching changes. 4. Professional development should be developed using a clear theory of change, where facilitators understand what the intended educational outcomes for teachers are and how these will subsequently impact pupil outcomes. Ideally, they should check whether teachers learn what was intended. 5. Whilst professional development may need to be sustained over time, what the time is used for, is more important than the amount. 6. More effective professional development is likely to be designed to build on the existing knowledge, skills and understanding of participants. 7. The content of professional development programmes should be based on the best available evidence on effective pedagogies and classroom interventions and aim to enhance capabilities and understanding in order to improve pupil outcomes. 8. Teachers are more likely to improve if they feel that they are working within a supportive professional environment, where both trust and high professional standards are maintained. 9. Supportive environments include having the time and resource to undertake relevant professional development and collaborate with peers, and the provision of feedback to enable teachers to improve. They also include receiving support from school leadership, both in addressing concerns and in maintaining standards for pupil behaviour. 10. Professional development is likely to be more effective when design and delivery involves specialist expertise from a range of sources. This may include internal or external expertise. 11. Teacher developers should choose activities that suit the aims and context of their professional development programme. Successful models have included regular, expert-led conversations about classroom practice, teacher development groups, and structured interventions. However, these activities do not work in all circumstances and the model should fit the educational aims, content and context of the programme. 12. All schools with early career teachers undertaking statutory induction must adhere to the regulations and relevant statutory guidance. 13. School staff with disabilities may require reasonable adjustments; working closely with these staff to understand barriers and identify effective approaches is essential. |
Contribute to effective professional development linked to teaching, curriculum and assessment across the school by: Plan, conduct, and support colleagues to conduct, regular, expert-led conversations (which could be referred to as mentoring or coaching) about teaching by: Avoid common teacher assessment pitfalls by designing approaches that: |
Implementation | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Implementation is an ongoing process that must adapt to context over time, rather than a single event. It involves the application of specific implementation activities and principles over an extended period (e.g. implementation planning, ongoing monitoring). 2. Successful implementation requires expert knowledge of the approach that is being implemented and the related area of practice (e.g. behaviour), which is shared amongst staff. 3. Implementation should involve repurposing existing processes and resources (e.g. governance, data collection) rather than creating a separate set of procedures. 4. Effective implementation begins by accurately diagnosing the problem and making evidence-informed decisions on what to implement. 5. Thorough preparation is important: time and care spent planning, communicating and resourcing the desired changes provides the foundation for successful delivery. Teachers and leaders should keep checking how ready their colleagues are to make the planned changes. 6. Implementing an approach with fidelity (i.e. as intended) increases the chance of it impacting positively on school practice and pupil outcomes. Any approach should specify which features of the approach need to be adopted closely and where there is scope for adaptation. 7. A combination of integrated activities is likely to be needed to support implementation (e.g. training, monitoring, feedback) rather than any single activity. Follow-on support (e.g. through high-quality coaching) is key to embedding new skills and knowledge developed during initial training. 8. Delivery of a new approach is a learning process – expect challenges but aim for continuous improvement. Monitoring implementation is an essential tool in identifying, and acting on, problems and solutions. 9. The confidence to make good implementation decisions is derived, in part, from confidence in the data on which those decisions are based. Reliable monitoring and evaluation enable schools to make well-informed choices, and to see how their improvement efforts are impacting on teacher knowledge, classroom practices and pupil outcomes. 10. A school’s capacity to implement an approach is rarely static (e.g. staff leave, contexts change). Sustained implementation requires leaders to keep supporting and rewarding the appropriate use of an approach and check it is still aligned with the overall strategy and context. 11. Implementation benefits from dedicated but distributed school leadership. Senior leaders should provide a clear vision and direction for the changes to come. At the same time, implementation is a complex process that requires feedback from staff and shared leadership responsibilities. 12. Implementation processes are influenced by, but also influence, school climate and culture. Implementation is easier when staff feel trusted to try new things and make mistakes, safe in the knowledge that they will be supported with resources, training, and encouragement to keep improving. |
Plan and execute implementation in stages by: Make the right choices on what to implement by: Prepare appropriately for the changes to come by: Deliver changes by: Sustain changes by: |
High Expectations (Standard 1 – Set high expectations) | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils. 2. Teachers are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils. 3. Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential. 4. Setting clear expectations can help communicate shared values that improve classroom and school culture. 5. A culture of mutual trust and respect supports effective relationships. 6. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. |
Communicate a belief in the academic potential of all pupils,
|
High Expectations (Standard 1 – Set high expectations) | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils. 2. Teachers are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils. 3. Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential. 4. Setting clear expectations can help communicate shared values that improve classroom and school culture. 5. A culture of mutual trust and respect supports effective relationships. 6. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. |
Communicate a belief in the academic potential of all pupils,
|
High Expectations (Standard 1 – Set high expectations) | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils. 2. Teachers are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils. 3. Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential. 4. Setting clear expectations can help communicate shared values that improve classroom and school culture. 5. A culture of mutual trust and respect supports effective relationships. 6. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. |
Communicate a belief in the academic potential of all pupils,
|
High Expectations (Standard 1 – Set high expectations) | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils. 2. Teachers are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils. 3. Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential. 4. Setting clear expectations can help communicate shared values that improve classroom and school culture. 5. A culture of mutual trust and respect supports effective relationships. 6. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. |
Communicate a belief in the academic potential of all pupils,
|
High Expectations (Standard 1 – Set high expectations) | |
Learn that… | Learn how to… |
1. Teachers have the ability to affect and improve the wellbeing, motivation and behaviour of their pupils. 2. Teachers are key role models, who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils. 3. Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential. 4. Setting clear expectations can help communicate shared values that improve classroom and school culture. 5. A culture of mutual trust and respect supports effective relationships. 6. High-quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. |
Communicate a belief in the academic potential of all pupils,
|