Wave MAT Professional Development (PD) Group

Please note: This event booking is only applicable for invited registration for schools/settings in the WAVE MAT Trust. If you are not part of this group, please contact us for further guidance.

For professionals ready to work on a school improvement project over time.

Professional Development (PD) Groups are facilitated, cohort-based groups where professionals work on a defined school improvement project over time.

These are not webinars or one-off CPD sessions. Participation involves active engagement across a series of sessions, with work taking place in your setting between sessions.

Participants are expected to commit to attending all sessions and to work on their improvement project between sessions.

This professional development group supports Vice Principals, senior leaders and Trust subject Leads across a specialist Alternative Provision (AP) Trust to explore, refine, and align approaches to adaptive teaching reflecting the unique context of AP settings.

Ultimately, the PD Group aims to build sustainable leadership capacity at Academy level to improve teaching and learning for vulnerable learners, ensuring that all pupils are supported to re-engage, make progress, and experience success.

Recognising that AP cohorts are often transient, present with significant gaps in prior learning, and may have experienced considerable trauma, the group will examine how teaching must be responsive, flexible, and rooted in a deep understanding of individual need.

Attention will be given to how leaders can ensure teaching approaches are both inclusive and ambitious, while remaining sensitive to the complex social, emotional, and behavioural needs of pupils.
 

The aim of the PD group is to enable participants to:

• Develop a shared understanding of what high-quality adaptive teaching looks like in an AP context
• Strengthen the use of formative assessment to identify need, inform teaching, and monitor impact, ensuring ILPs are effective and impactful
• Ensure the graduated response is meaningfully embedded within classroom practice
• Consider how trauma-informed approaches shape pedagogy and learning environments
• Identify practical, sustainable strategies that support consistency across the Trust
• Apply the EEF Implementation Guidance to inform the planning, delivery and sustainability of SEND and inclusion priorities 

Please note: This PD Group is delivered as a series of sessions and requires commitment to attending all sessions.

WAVE MAT Professional Development (PD) Group

• Session 1: Thursday 17 September 2026, 9:30am-12:30pm (in-person)
• Session 2: Tuesday 24 November 2026, 3:00-4:30pm (online)
• Session 3: Tuesday 26 January 2027, 3:00-4:30pm (online)
   

Format: Online and in-person (venue to be confirmed)
If you have any questions, please contact the Whole School SEND team.

Terms & Conditions

By registering for this group, you agree that your name and email address will be shared with the external delivery partner supporting this programme (e.g. X Local Authority / X Trust). This is so they can contact you about sessions and support engagement. Communications may come from Whole School SEND and the external partner.