The Generic Training Problem

Picture the scene. A school INSET day. Ninety members of staff crammed into a hall. A visitor from an educational consultancy delivers a presentation on, say, metacognition. It is a good presentation. The research is sound. The examples are relevant. The presenter is engaging.

And yet, for the newly qualified teacher in the front row who is struggling with basic classroom management, it is almost entirely irrelevant. For the experienced SENCO in the third row who needs specific guidance on co-occurring conditions, it misses the mark entirely. For the subject specialist at the back who needs to understand how these principles apply to her particular discipline, it is too generic to be useful.

One presentation. Ninety people. Ninety different levels of prior knowledge, ninety different developmental priorities, ninety different practical contexts. The generic approach serves none of them as well as it could serve any of them. This is the fundamental problem with one-size-fits-all CPD — and why its days, in 2026, are genuinely numbered.

The Personalisation Revolution

We live in an era of unprecedented personalisation in almost every domain of life. Music recommendations based on listening history. Health interventions based on individual biomarkers. Shopping experiences tailored to individual preference. News feeds curated to individual interest. The algorithms that drive these experiences are imperfect — often uncomfortably accurate — but they represent a genuine shift in what we expect from any experience designed for large numbers of people.

Professional development has been slow to catch up. The INSET day model persists in most schools because it is administratively convenient and because the alternatives require investment — in design, in technology, in facilitation — that many schools feel they cannot justify. But the case for personalisation is increasingly compelling, and the tools to deliver it are increasingly accessible.

What Personalised CPD Looks Like

Personalised professional development takes several forms, ranging from relatively simple adaptations of existing practice to sophisticated AI-driven systems.

Needs-led design

At the simplest level, personalisation means designing CPD provision based on actual analysis of need rather than assumption. Pre-INSET surveys, analysis of lesson observation data, review of student outcome data and individual professional conversations all generate insight into what specific members of a staff team actually need — and that insight can be used to design provision that is at least partially differentiated.

Coaching and mentoring

One-to-one coaching is inherently personalised. A skilled coach working with an individual teacher or leader adapts every conversation to the specific context, challenges and goals of that individual. This is the gold standard of personalised professional development and consistently produces the largest effect sizes in the research literature (Joyce and Showers, 2002).

AI-powered learning pathways

The most sophisticated form of personalisation uses AI to analyse multiple data sources — observation data, student outcomes, self-reflection inputs, peer feedback — and generate specific, targeted recommendations for individual professionals. This is no longer theoretical. Platforms like The CPD Register and various EdTech providers are actively developing and deploying these systems in English schools.

The Micro-Learning Dimension

Personalisation and micro-learning are natural partners. Micro-learning — the delivery of professional development content in focused, short units of five to fifteen minutes — is more effective than extended sessions for most types of professional learning because it fits within the cognitive capacity available during a working day, allows immediate application and can be targeted at the precise moment of need (Thalheimer, 2017).

A teacher who is about to deliver a lesson on a topic they find challenging can access a five-minute micro-learning resource on effective questioning strategies for that topic, delivered at the moment they need it. This is qualitatively different from sitting through a ninety-minute session on questioning strategies at a date removed from any immediate application. The former changes what happens in the next lesson. The latter may change nothing at all.

What Schools Can Do Now

Full personalisation of CPD requires investment in technology and facilitation that is beyond many schools’ current capacity. But there are immediate, low-cost steps that move in the right direction:

• Survey staff before every CPD event and use the results to differentiate the provision
• Offer choice wherever possible — within themes, between resources, across session formats
• Build coaching conversations into the CPD calendar rather than relying exclusively on group training
• Create self-directed professional reading time with support for teachers to identify and pursue their own priorities
• Connect CPD directly to specific classroom challenges that teachers are currently experiencing