Teacher CPD Requirements: DfE & Ofsted
Professional development is essential to improving teaching, supporting staff and delivering better outcomes for pupils.
Teacher CPD in 2026: What Do the DfE and Ofsted Really Expect from Schools?
Professional development is essential to improving teaching, supporting staff and delivering better outcomes for pupils. But what are schools actually required to do, what does Ofsted expect, and how can technology make the process easier?
For headteachers, trust leaders and professional development coordinators, managing continuing professional development (CPD) is an increasingly important responsibility.
The challenge isn’t simply providing training. It’s ensuring that professional learning is relevant, accessible, evidence-informed and makes a genuine difference in the classroom.
With Ofsted’s updated education inspection toolkits applying from September 2026, now is a good time for schools to review their approach.
1. What are schools legally required to provide?
There is an important distinction between statutory requirements and recommended good practice.
In England, there is no universal legal requirement for every qualified teacher to complete a specified number of CPD hours annually.
However, schools do have specific responsibilities, including:
Providing statutory induction and the relevant training entitlement for eligible early career teachers.
Ensuring relevant safeguarding training and updates take place.
Meeting role-specific statutory training obligations.
Supporting teachers in maintaining appropriate professional knowledge and skills.
For early career teachers, the two-year Early Career Teacher Entitlement provides a structured programme involving training, mentoring, protected time and assessment.
For experienced teachers, the emphasis is on continuing professional development suited to their roles and the needs of their pupils.
The key message: effective CPD is about professional improvement, not simply accumulating training hours.
2. What does Ofsted expect from professional development?
Ofsted’s education inspection framework places importance on the quality of leadership, teaching and staff development.
Inspectors consider whether leaders provide professional learning that supports staff expertise and contributes to improving education.
In practical terms, schools should be able to explain:
How professional development needs are identified.
Whether CPD supports school improvement priorities.
How training strengthens subject and pedagogical knowledge.
How staff are supported in meeting pupils’ needs, including SEND.
Whether professional learning is well planned and implemented.
How leaders understand the impact of staff development.
Whether workload and wellbeing are appropriately considered.
Ofsted does not prescribe a particular CPD platform, set a universal minimum number of training hours or require schools to produce a specific CPD certificate for every activity.
Schools should avoid creating unnecessary paperwork purely for inspection.
Instead, leaders need to demonstrate a thoughtful approach to developing their workforce.
3. What does the Department for Education recommend?
The Department for Education’s Standard for Teachers’ Professional Development sets out principles for effective professional learning.
These include:
A focus on pupil outcomes
CPD should ultimately help teachers improve learning and outcomes for pupils.
Evidence-informed development
Professional development should draw on reliable evidence and established principles of effective teaching.
Collaboration and expert support
Teachers benefit from opportunities to learn from colleagues, mentors, specialists and experienced practitioners.
Sustained professional learning
Effective CPD is rarely achieved through a single isolated training session. Teachers need opportunities to revisit ideas, practise new techniques and reflect on their impact.
Leadership commitment
School leaders should prioritise professional development and create the conditions for it to succeed.
Together, these principles encourage schools to move away from one-off training activities towards continuous professional learning.
4. The problem: CPD is often fragmented
Many schools and multi-academy trusts already invest considerable time and money in professional development.
Yet the systems supporting it can be fragmented.
Training might be delivered through face-to-face events, external websites, webinars, shared documents, email invitations and separate learning platforms.
This creates several challenges:
Staff struggle to discover relevant opportunities.
Leaders lack visibility across schools.
Training records become difficult to maintain.
Attendance and learning evidence are disconnected.
Professional development becomes administratively expensive.
Measuring engagement and impact becomes harder.
For multi-academy trusts, these challenges multiply when each school operates independently.
The opportunity is not necessarily to deliver more training, but to manage existing professional development much more effectively.
5. How can schools make professional development more effective?
A modern CPD approach should bring professional learning into one accessible environment.
Teachers should be able to discover relevant opportunities, book onto events, complete online learning, access resources and maintain a record of their development.
Leaders should have a clear view of participation, training needs and progress without creating additional administrative work.
A practical approach involves five steps:
Step 1: Identify development priorities
Understand what teachers need, based on school objectives, professional feedback and pupil needs.
Step 2: Provide relevant opportunities
Offer a mixture of online learning, face-to-face sessions, coaching and collaborative development.
Step 3: Make participation simple
Allow teachers to find, book and access training without unnecessary emails or complicated systems.
Step 4: Record progress
Bring attendance, learning completion, assessments and certificates together where appropriate.
Step 5: Evaluate impact
Look beyond attendance figures. Gather feedback, support reflection and consider how learning changes teaching practice.
6. How Learner Journey can help
Learner Journey is an AI-enabled platform designed to help organisations bring learning, events, communities and professional development together.
For schools, teaching school hubs and multi-academy trusts, it offers a practical way to create a more connected CPD experience.
Events and bookings
Publish training opportunities, manage registrations and keep event administration organised.
Online professional learning
Create learning paths, resources, quizzes and assessments that teachers can access flexibly.
Certificates and progress records
Record completion and issue certificates, helping participants maintain evidence of professional learning.
AI-supported learning
Give users access to AI tutoring and coaching features, with workspace-level controls, to support learning and reflection.
Communications and engagement
Use integrated CRM and communication capabilities to manage contacts, send updates and promote relevant professional development.
A shared professional learning community
Bring training, information and engagement into a single workspace rather than spreading them across disconnected systems.
For multi-academy trusts, this can provide a more consistent experience for staff across multiple schools while reducing administrative duplication.
Of course, tracking attendance and completion is not the same as proving improvements in teaching. Schools still need professional judgement, observation, reflection and appropriate evaluation to assess impact.
7. From CPD compliance to a culture of professional learning
The direction of travel in education is clear.
Professional development should not be treated merely as an annual requirement or a collection of training certificates.
It should be an ongoing process that improves teaching, builds professional confidence and supports better outcomes for pupils.
Schools need to balance three priorities:
Quality: Providing meaningful, evidence-informed learning.
Accessibility: Making development easy for staff.
Visibility: Understanding participation and impact.
Technology can support all three, provided it reduces workload rather than adding another administrative system.
Conclusion: Is your school ready for a better approach to CPD?
The DfE and Ofsted expect schools to take professional learning seriously, but effective CPD should not become a bureaucratic exercise.
The strongest approach is to make professional development part of everyday school life — accessible to teachers, manageable for leaders and focused on improving education.
At Learner Journey, we believe professional learning should be easier to organise, more engaging to participate in and simpler to manage across schools and trusts.
Bring your professional development together with Learner Journey.
Discover how Learner Journey can support teacher CPD, training events and professional learning communities.
