The PTI

Season’s Greetings from everyone at The PTI! This year’s PTI Christmas card was designed by Imogen, a Year 9 student at St Edward's College, Liverpool. She won our Christmas Card competition with her sparkly deer. It has been signed by our staff and sent out to teachers, schools, supporters and patrons of the charity across the country!

Announcing: New Ambassador for The PTI 💫 Baroness Sally Morgan is Fitzwilliam College’s ninth Master. She has been a trustee at The PTI, helping teachers across the country to develop their subject knowledge so their students receive the best education possible. Now, she’s becoming an Ambassador for The PTI. Sally worked as a secondary school teacher from 1981-1985. She has an MA in Education and she’s a Labour peer, having spent eight years advising 10 Downing Street and acting as Minister for Women and Equalities. She’s an impressive person to represent our mission of education, teaching, and strong subject knowledge. She told us, 'I started my working life as a secondary school teacher and, ever since, have believed in the power of education to transform lives. Enthusing subject teachers is core to sparking intellectual interest in students that will stay with them whatever they do in the future.' You can find the full list of our ambassadors here: https://bit.ly/41LOpv0

Give yourself the gift of time away from the busy-ness of school to reflect on the deeper purpose of education. The PTI's Secondary Leadership Symposium in February 2025 will provide you with two days of nourishing talks and conversations. https://lnkd.in/eaMrYetu

Schools across the country are breaking for the end of term 🌟 Wishing all teachers and their students a lovely start to the holiday!

Congratulations! The PTI Teacher Leader Certificate helps to develop the skills that subject leaders need - passing it is a huge achievement 🎉

The PTI’s first RE CPD event – Friday 7th March 2025 💫 Teachers have shared with us the challenges faced when teaching RE in schools such as difficulties finding qualified specialists and engaging students with the subject. Therefore, by popular demand we will be holding our first RE day in March. We are delighted to have Linda Woodhead MBE join us to share her expertise on the subject. Discussing a subject which itself asks huge questions, we will work with leading academics, teachers and schools to try to answer our own: what constitutes a good religious education? RE teachers at a Primary or Secondary level – if you are passionate about providing students with an excellent Religious Education and would like the opportunity to develop your teaching practice, then we want to hear from you! If you have ideas or questions about what RE CPD at The PTI could look like, or if you would like to attend the inaugural RE day, then please email Ellie at ellie.lobo@ptieducation.org. You can also find more details about what we offer and the RE CPD day here: https://bit.ly/4iLGd3M

Students may have questions about the complex conflicts in the news and on social media, shaping politics and their lives. We’re running a series for teachers who want to provide clarity and perspective on such conflicts for their students, to enable them to reach their own informed positions. Next up is about Russia and Ukraine, running online, Wednesday 22nd January. We’re excited to be welcoming Mark Hurst, Lecturer in the History of Human Rights at Lancaster University, as our guest speaker. His research focuses on human rights activism during the Cold War, and the history of human rights and political activism in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia more broadly. Our teacher leader is Simon Powell. He’s taught history at Poole Grammar School for 32 years and has worked with The PTI since our very first conference in 2001, collaborating with leading academics and fellow teachers to bring history to life. This course will place this modern conflict in the context of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the narratives which have shaped their respective national identities. If you teach Russian history, the Cold War, or want to tackle sensitive geopolitics with your students, then sign up here: https://bit.ly/4iEN3s1 📸 History teachers on our Subject Enrichment Residential in 2024 discussing conflict and sources.

Musical thinking about the curriculum: breadth vs depth 🎼 Curriculum design often involves a negotiation between breadth vs depth. Nell MacLeod and Clare Irwin are both music teachers with years of experience teaching music and planning excellent music curriculums. If you're interested in this discussion and want to learn more, they're running a course with us all about the question of breadth vs depth on a music curriculum. Clare studied Music at Durham University before training to teach at the University of Cambridge. She is Head of Music at SAWSTON VILLAGE COLLEGE, where she is a whole-hearted advocate for teaching music musically. Her school has a long tradition of balancing access with excellence in the music curriculum. Nell trained to teach at Homerton College, Cambridge. She has worked as Head of Music at a large rural comprehensive in Cambridgeshire for 17 years. She's committed to providing a thorough and practical music education to all children, so her department is very widely resourced with a range of instruments and her curriculum is varied and rigorous. They will consider ways to develop a strong and interesting music curriculum - including frameworks like the NPME and Model Music Curriculum. It’s running in the new year, so there’s plenty of time to book your place on our website. 

This week at The PTI ✨ We ran our final two courses of 2024: 💷 Transform Financial Education, bringing financial education into schools with Young Enterprise UK and Emma Ward of ADHD Solutions CIC ⚛️ The Name’s Bond, Molecular Bond, addressing misconceptions when teaching bonding with Chandni Mehta and Keith Taber One teacher told us, 'I'm a physics teacher, and hence don't teach chemistry at KS5. This course was absolutely invaluable in terms of informing me about the more complex models required at KS5, and especially the misconceptions that could be generated at KS4.' In the office, we’re busy preparing for next year. The PTI Spring 2025 Calendar has been released. It’s live on our website now, with lots of new CPD courses to book on to. Exciting conversations about the Leadership Symposium are being had with innovative thinkers in education. Our Co-Director Carolyn Roberts spoke with Gráinne Hallahan, of Teacher Tapp about a panel chaired by Oliver Blond at The Milner York, formerly The Principal York Hotel. Planning for the 2025 Subject Enrichment residential is also underway, and speakers will be announced soon – watch this space. 📸 Photos from our online courses this week

The American Dream in Twentieth Century Literature 🌙 Our CPD courses are a collaboration between a practicing teacher and a guest speaker. This means The PTI can provide cutting-edge subject knowledge, then apply it to a current classroom context. Our course on American literature, The American Dream in the 20th Century, will cover some of the major texts on the curriculum: The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman, Of Mice and Men. Our speakers will explore the shifting meanings of the American Dream and how the concept functions as an umbrella term for historical, religious and cultural contexts. Author and English department head, Graham Pidgeon is our teacher leader. We’re also excited to announce guest speakers Niall Munro and Monica Pearl. Niall is a Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Oxford Brookes University and Director of the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre. His main areas of research are 19th- and 20th-century American writing, modern and contemporary poetry. He runs ignitionpress, an award-winning poetry pamphlet press. Monica is a Senior Lecturer in 20th Century American Literature and Film at the The University of Manchester. Her general expertise is in 20th American literature and film and her most recent research has been on cultural representations of AIDS, the development of personal and cultural identities through narrative, and the work of mourning, primarily in late twentieth-century American culture.