Throughout the year, we invite teachers and support staff from local schools and colleges to take part in our Continuous Professional Development (CPD) opportunities. We know that teachers and other staff in schools play a vital part in building their students’ aspirations and could make all the difference between someone choosing to go to university or not. That’s why we’re committed to investing in teachers’ professional development wherever we can.

Courses for teachers

Our courses range from on-demand resources to virtual events hosted by our award-winning academics and external providers. These are designed to upskill all teachers from NQTs to experienced members of staff and all of the events are free to access and hosted virtually after 3.30pm so they can fit easily around people’s teaching commitments.

Each event is split into two parts:

1. Our Higher Education update is designed to provide bitesize pieces of information for teachers to take back to the classroom prompting informal discussions about University.
2. Wider professional development, which is provided in collaboration with Dragonfly Training, ranges from behaviour management, and managing difficult conversations with parents, to teaching to the top of the class.

Resources for primary schools

Over the past year we have developed a series of online resources specifically for Primary School teachers. This fun, free and interactive series of lessons for year 6 pupils helps children to develop their confidence and to make the most of their own unique set of skills and abilities. 

Over a series of lessons pupils hear from Film Studies lecturer Dr Miriam Kent, who is an expert in superheroes, discover the achievements of aspirational people and think about what makes them a hero, meet our inspiring student ambassadors and explore our Colchester Campus, and complete their own Super Stars workbook to identify their own superpowers.

Everything teachers need to deliver this set of lessons including PowerPoint presentations, lesson plans and resources are available free of charge and can be downloaded from our website.

Finding out more

You can find out more about the work of our Outreach team by visiting the Schools and Colleges pages on our website.

If you have any questions or would like to find out more  the Outreach team would love to hear from you. Just email outreach@essex.ac.uk.