Today's white paper - implications for PD

What the new schools white paper means for professional development at scale

The new DfE white paper, Every child achieving and thriving (published 23 February 2026), is not just a schools reform document. Read through a professional development lens, it is really a system design paper for how capability will be built across teachers, leaders, support staff, schools and trusts over the next few years.

For those leading professional development (PD), teaching and learning, and school improvement across schools and trusts, the signal is clear: the bar is moving from “running CPD” to building a trust- and place-wide development infrastructure.

The biggest shift: PD becomes a delivery mechanism for policy, not a support function

The white paper’s three headline shifts (from narrow to broad, sidelined to included, withdrawn to engaged) all depend on adult expertise changing at scale. The paper repeatedly returns to the need for evidence-based teaching, inclusive practice, stronger leadership, collaboration and better use of data/technology.

That has two immediate implications:

• PD leaders are now implementation leaders.
  If your trust is serious about inclusion, attendance, KS3 transition, enrichment, behaviour, AI, or parental engagement, the route is through what adults know and do every day.

• T&L leaders need a broader remit.
  The paper’s “achieving and thriving” framing means PD can’t only focus on instruction in a narrow sense. It now sits alongside belonging, engagement, attendance, and inclusive culture as part of one improvement architecture.

The Teacher Training Entitlement changes the expectation of what a PD strategy should be

The most explicit policy lever is the new Teacher Training Entitlement (TTE), which the paper says is intended to ensure every teacher and leader can access high-quality professional development. It also states that the TTE will evolve to support evidence-based practice, including the use of technology and AI.

The white paper also says the TTE will:

• strengthen the national offer,

• extend provision to experienced teachers and leaders,

• improve clarity and accessibility of development opportunities,

• and support schools to build strong development cultures.

What this means in practice for trusts and schools

A credible PD strategy now needs to look less like a menu of stuff on offer and more like a compelling, career-stage pathway, for example:

• ECT and early-career development,

• middle-leader development,

• experienced teacher expertise-building,

• senior leadership / headship support,

• support staff and specialist roles.

In other words, “CPD calendar” thinking will be too small. The white paper invites (and eventually may require) PD architecture thinking.

Inclusion and SEND are no longer a specialist strand - they become the spine of PD

One of the strongest implications in the white paper is that SEND/inclusion capability is now a mainstream workforce expectation. The paper links this directly to the workforce challenge, noting confidence gaps in supporting children with SEND, and announces over £200 million over 3 years for a SEND CPD programme, including a training package available from September 2026 across early years, schools and post-16.

It also proposes that schools publish an ‘Inclusion Strategy’ explaining how resources are deployed and how inclusion funding is used, with oversight and challenge.

The implication for PD leaders

This is a major shift in responsibility. Inclusion can no longer sit only with the SENCO, specialist teams, or occasional INSET. At scale, trusts will need to build:

• a shared language for inclusive teaching,

• coaching and walkthroughs that include adaptive practice,

• subject-specific inclusion guidance,

• training for support staff and pastoral teams,

• leadership development on resource deployment and quality assurance.

The practical question for PD leaders becomes: Can we evidence that our PD model is improving inclusive classroom practice across all schools, not just offering SEND training?

NPQ reform and TTE push leadership PD toward people leadership, not just school management

The white paper states that NPQs will be reformed to better reflect current training needs, including supporting children with SEND and people leadership skills, and that ECTE will be reviewed again in 2027.

This matters because some trusts have historically built leadership development around operational competence, compliance, and performance systems. The paper suggests the centre of gravity is shifting toward:

• people development (coaching, mentoring, developing teams),

• inclusive leadership,

• culture-building,

• and leading change through collaboration.

It also references a new mentoring and coaching offer for headteachers and expanded support networks for heads. This is so needed as so many heads I know are ready to pack it all in.

What this means for leaders of T&L

If you lead teaching and learning at trust scale, your role is increasingly to design leadership learning systems as much as teacher CPD:

• how line managers coach,

• how heads are supported to lead instructional improvement,

• how middle leaders are developed as culture shapers,

• how expertise is mobilised between schools.

The white paper expects networked professional learning - not isolated school CPD

The paper is explicit about collaboration and the role of system infrastructure. It proposes a RISE Key Stage 3 Alliance to spread practice on KS3 transition, teaching and curriculum, attendance and data, and also references working through the universal RISE programme (including teaching school hubs) to improve access to high-quality PD and knowledge-sharing.

It also sets out Attendance and Behaviour Hubs with structured training programmes, open days and regional best-practice sharing.

Implication for trusts

Trusts that are strong at internal PD but weak at outward-facing collaboration may now be out of step with policy direction. At-scale PD leaders should expect to spend more time on:

• cross-school professional networks,

• hub/alliance participation,

• peer review and knowledge mobilisation,

• adapting external learning into local practice.

This is increasingly part of how the system expects improvement to happen.

Behaviour, attendance and belonging now sit inside the PD agenda

A striking feature of the white paper is how often it links engagement, belonging and relationships to attendance and attainment. It commits to a new Pupil Engagement Framework, expects schools to use engagement data effectively and says that by 2029 every school should monitor belonging and engagement. How they will do this and what the metrics will look like remains to be seen.

For PD leaders, that changes the curriculum of professional learning.

The old model:

• pedagogy,

• assessment,

• curriculum,

• maybe behaviour.

The emerging model:

• pedagogy plus

• inclusive routines,

• relational practice,

• engagement diagnostics,

• family partnership,

• behaviour and attendance systems,

• cross-service working.

This does not mean turning PD into generic wellbeing training. It means building staff expertise in the practices that the paper now treats as core to learning time and outcomes.

AI, data and technology move from fringe CPD to core professional capability

The white paper explicitly links the TTE to technology and AI, and it references an AI Safety and Pedagogy Taskforce to develop benchmarks and support safe, pedagogy-aligned adoption.

That is a strong policy signal: trusts should move beyond ad hoc “AI twilight sessions” and start building a proper capability pathway covering:

• safe and ethical use,

• pedagogy-first decision making,

• teacher workload use cases,

• leadership evaluation of tools,

• data literacy and assurance.

For those leading PD at scale, this is less about promoting tools and more about creating professional judgement frameworks.

Trust standards and trust inspection raise the stakes for PD leadership at trust level

The white paper proposes new Trust Standards emphasising standards, inclusion, value for money and “contributing willingly to community collaboration,” and positions trust inspection as a way to surface strengths, weaknesses and wider system contribution.

For trust CEOs, directors of education and trust T&L leaders, this means PD is now strategically central to:

• trust quality,

• collaboration credibility,

• inclusion delivery,

• and system contribution.

In practical terms, trust PD leaders should expect sharper questions such as:

• How consistent is professional practice across schools?

• How do you know PD changes classroom and leadership behaviours?

• How are you developing inclusion capability, not just compliance?

• How do you build and export expertise across the trust and beyond?

What should leaders do next?

A sensible response is not to rewrite everything. It is to reframe existing PD plans around four white-paper-ready threads:

1. Career-stage entitlement
   Build a coherent pathway from early career to executive leadership, with clarity on access and progression.

2. Inclusion as the default
   Thread SEND/adaptive practice through subject, phase, coaching and leadership PD - not as a separate bolt-on.

3. Engagement, attendance and culture capability
   Develop leaders and teachers to use engagement data, relational practice and behaviour systems as core school improvement disciplines.

4. Networked improvement and knowledge mobilisation
   Design for collaboration across schools, trusts and hubs, because the policy architecture assumes improvement will be shared.

Final thought

The trusts and schools that thrive will be those that can combine coherent instructional development with inclusion, engagement, leadership coaching and collaboration, and do it consistently across multiple schools, not just in pockets.