Frederic Chopin Integrative Saturday School in Bath (FCISS) highly values its staff. It is in the interests of FCISS, the children, families, and the individual, that each staff member be given the opportunity to develop their skills to their maximum and to broaden their knowledge and skills in caring for children.
Personal and professional development is essential to maintaining the quality and delivery of high quality care and education for young children in early years. It underpins all aspects of curriculum delivery and positive interactions.
At FCISS we ensure that 75% of teaching staff are qualified in childcare and education and aim towards 100% or other high level qualifications.
We strongly promote constant professional development and all staff have individual training records and training plans to enhance their skills and expertise.
External training and support is sought as appropriate to the needs of the staff and the children attending and to renew/update staff qualifications.
To facilitate the development of staff we:
• promote teamwork through on-going communication, involvement and a no
• blame culture to enhance best practice
• provide opportunities for delegation based on skills and expertise to offer
• recognition and stimulate staff
• encourage staff to contribute ideas for change within the School and hold
• regular staff meetings and team meetings to develop these ideas.
• Regular meetings are also held to discuss strategy, policy and curriculum planning
• encourage staff to further their experience and knowledge by attending
• relevant external training courses
• encourage staff to pass on their knowledge to those who are less experienced and disseminate knowledge from external training to small groups of staff within FCISS
• provide regular in-house training relevant to the needs of the staff
• carry out on-going supervision with all staff. Staff appraisals are carried out every year where objectives and action plans for staff are set out, whilst also sourcing training according to their individual needs
• develop a training plan addressing both qualifications and continuous professional development needs of the setting and of individual staff
• promote a positive learning culture within the setting
• delegate responsibilities according to an individual’s expertise
• cascade information and hold regular internal training events
• carry out training needs analysis for all individual staff, the team as a
• whole, and for FCISS
• carry out full evaluations of all training events and use these to evaluate the training against the aims set to enable the development of future training programmes to improve effectiveness and staff learning
• provide inductions to welcome all new staff and assign a ‘work-buddy’ to coach and support new staff
• offer on-going support and guidance
