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From CPD tracking to CPD evidence for inspection

A CPD log of course titles proves attendance. What turns CPD tracking into CPD evidence for inspection, and how to keep the record when a teacher leaves.

A CPD log listing course titles and dates proves that people attended things. It does not show that anything changed in a classroom, and the distinction matters, because attendance is the one part of professional development that has no effect on pupils by itself.

CPD evidence for inspection is the chain, not the certificate: an identified need, the activity chosen because of it, what the teacher said they would do differently, a dated look at whether they did, and a note of what happened next. Every school already does most of this. Very few write down the middle.

Why a log of course titles proves attendance and nothing else

Look at a typical CPD spreadsheet. It has a name, a course title, a date, sometimes a number of hours, sometimes a cost. Every column describes an input. None describes an outcome.

A reader learns from it that your school spends money on training and keeps tidy records. They cannot learn whether teaching is better, which is the only question that matters. A long log also invites the obvious follow-up: what changed as a result? A school that cannot answer has demonstrated activity in place of improvement.

The fix is not more columns for their own sake, but three pieces of information captured at three different moments, which most schools generate anyway and then let evaporate.

What turns CPD tracking into CPD evidence for inspection

Read as a sequence, those four rows are a small ADRI cycle: an approach chosen for a reason, deployed with named people, a result somebody looked at, and a decision about what to do next. That is why CPD records slot naturally into an ADRI improvement plan rather than sitting in a separate file.

Two practical notes. First, the intended change must be in the teacher's words, not the trainer's; a sentence copied from the course description tells a reader nothing. Second, plan the follow-up date at the moment of the training, not later. A follow-up that is arranged when someone remembers usually is not arranged at all.

Whole-school training is the hardest to evidence

The INSET day that every member of staff attended is the activity that proves the least. Everyone was there, so attendance carries no information, and a single shared session rarely produces a change you can trace to one person.

What makes whole-school training evidence is the variation afterwards. Take a sample (a handful of teachers across different departments), state what each intended to change, and look at that sample on a planned date. A record covering eight named teachers with what was seen in each classroom is stronger than a register of a hundred and twenty signatures.

The teacher who leaves in February

This is the most common way a CPD record breaks, and it is worth planning for rather than reacting to.

When a teacher resigns mid-year, the record of their development often walks out with them. The certificates were in their inbox, the reflection in a personal folder, and the conversation about what they were working on happened in a corridor with a head of department who is now covering their classes.

Three things are lost at once. The department's development history has a hole in it, so the following year's planning starts from an incomplete picture. Any cycle they were part of is left open, which reads worse than a cycle that was closed and reported honestly. And the person who replaces them inherits nothing about what the department had been working on.

The remedies are ordinary.

• Hold the record centrally, not personally. The school's copy is the record; the teacher's copy is a convenience. If the only place a certificate exists is a member of staff's email, the school does not have it.
• Record against the role as well as the person. "Head of Year 4, in post from September, working on questioning" survives a change of occupant in a way that a name alone does not.
• Capture the state before the last day. A short handover note (what this teacher was working on, where the cycle had reached, what the next step would have been) takes fifteen minutes and closes the gap.
• Report the departure rather than hiding it. A record that says a cycle stopped in February because the teacher left, and what the department did instead, is honest and complete. A cycle that simply stops is neither.

The mirror problem is the teacher who arrives in February. Their previous training is largely unverifiable, and pretending otherwise is a mistake. Record what your school did with them from the day they arrived: the induction, the early observation, the need it identified, and the activity that followed.

A minimal CPD record that works

If you are rebuilding, these are the fields to hold. It fits in a spreadsheet, and the point is what is recorded rather than what it is recorded in.

1. Teacher name and role, and the department.
2. The need, in one sentence, and where it came from: an observation, a set of results, a self-evaluation gap, a personal choice.
3. The activity: title, provider, date, hours.
4. The intended change, written by the teacher within a day, naming a class.
5. The follow-up date and the person who will look, agreed at the time of the training.
6. What was seen on that date, in one or two sentences, including nothing-changed outcomes.
7. The decision that followed: closed, repeated, escalated to coaching, or abandoned with a reason.

Fields two, four, five and six are the ones that carry the weight. They are also the four that most logs omit.

Because they depend on somebody looking at a classroom, this record only works when it is joined to your observation cycle; the practical mechanics of that are in lesson observation that produces evidence. The general properties that make any of this hold up (dated, attributable, showing change, findable by a stranger) are set out in what counts as evidence in a school inspection.

The time this actually costs

Fields two, four and five take a few minutes each if they are captured at the moment; field six takes as long as the follow-up look, which you were doing anyway. If your school runs perhaps forty CPD activities in a year, that is a handful of hours of recording spread across twelve months. Reconstructing the same material in the term before an inspection takes days and reads as reconstructed, because it is.

For how CPD records sit alongside self-evaluation and improvement planning across a year, see our guide to Gulf school inspection readiness. Groups operating in more than one country face the extra question of tagging the same record for different national frameworks, which is covered in one evidence base against four frameworks, and if your spreadsheet has stopped coping, the guide to inspection preparation software sets out what to check before buying anything.

Frequently asked questions

What CPD evidence do schools need for inspection? Beyond attendance, a record showing why each activity was chosen, what the teacher intended to change, and a dated look at whether it happened in the classroom. The chain from an identified need to a later observation is what demonstrates effect rather than participation.

Is a CPD certificate enough evidence? A certificate proves someone sat in a room. It is worth keeping, but on its own it says nothing about pupils. Pair it with the teacher's stated intention, the date somebody looked at their teaching afterwards, and a short note of what was different.

How do you record the impact of CPD? Record the intended change in the teacher's own words immediately after the training, agree when the follow-up will happen, and write what was actually seen on that date. Include the cases where nothing changed; a record showing only successes reads as selective.

What happens to CPD records when a teacher leaves mid-year? If the record lives in their inbox or personal folder, it leaves with them and the department history has a hole. Hold CPD records centrally, against the role as well as the person, and capture the state of any unfinished cycle before the leaving date.

How Asabya Academy helps

Asabya Academy holds CPD tracking as school-owned records rather than personal ones, linked to the observation that identified the need and to the appraisal cycle that follows, so a teacher's departure leaves the department's development history intact and the evidence stays mapped to the standards it supports.