Committed to Continuous Professional Development

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With half-term fast approaching – our teams across Wales are set to support their supply staff with a series of free training sessions.

New Directions Education is committed to working with our supply community to give them access to the types of benefits that permanent members of staff have.

Speaking about the upcoming training sessions, Howard Burge, National Director says ‘we have always had a dedication to our supply staff. Working with a recruitment agency can be an isolating experience for some. Our objective is to ensure we give the best possible experience we can to our staff. From reward incentives to free training – we want to offer access to benefits that will enhance their continuous professional development at no cost’.

For the October 2017 half-term our teams are offering the following training sessions:

Cardiff – Team Teach (FULL) and Manual Handling (some spaces left)

Wrexham – PSBM – Personal Safety and Behavioural Management (PSBM)

Wirral – Team Teach (FULL)

New Directions Education set up their dedicated in-house training team in 2009 as a direct response to the education supply community and has delivered courses such as Autism Awareness, First Aid, Food Hygiene, Read, Write Inc and many others.

In the summer of 2017 our teams had record numbers of candidates attending our training sessions. We launched a series of new sessions including ‘Working at Heights’ for our Caretaker community and SIMS training for our administrative specialists. Speaking about the development of these sessions, Emily Tune, Branch Manager for the School Support Services Team said ‘New Directions is synonymous for recruitment of Supply Teachers. What we deliver in our department is a dedicated service for school support staff – the real unsung heroes – Caretakers, Administrators, Exam Invigilators, Technicians and any other support functionality within a school or college. We have a responsibility in making sure that these staff have access to all of the benefits that our traditional staff receive too’.

Some of the comments offered by our delegates at the SIMS training we offered included:

“Mondays SIMS training was great, really beneficial as never used it before. Great tutor, he explained things well and answered all questions”.

“As I have used SIMS before I thought that it might cover things I knew but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The content was very informative and addressed things I would have asked for as a teacher and more. The pace and format of the day was great and I felt David conducted it in a friendly, informal way where everyone felt at ease to ask questions. I realise that he was approaching it more from a secondary point of view as that is where his experience lies but data imported has been input by another setting, usually a primary and I was glad he touched on this, adding new pupils and editing data, in the afternoon. I was very impressed by the amount he was able to cover in one day and will be taking my notes with me if offered any work. I am also very grateful for David giving up a day of his holiday”.

“I found the SIMS training interesting and valuable. I found retrieving students and staffs data straightforward, however I was impressed how more information is available/stored within the database that can be used for all sorts of use. I am particularly interested on how SIMS generates reports for various purposes and its compatibility with other software opens up more opportunities of exploring and learning.

David delivered the training in the most professional way and he made it easy to understand.  He is friendly, patient, engaging and accommodating.

Overall, I rate SIMS training and David excellent!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take part in the day and hopefully my new skills will be of use some time in the future”.