Aldridge Education

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Welcome to Growing Together

Welcome to GROWING TOGETHER - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Grow your career: grow their futures

We are delighted to offer a range of professional development courses. These are drawn from all areas of our organisation, giving all of our colleagues the opportunity to make progress in their knowledge and skills.

 

Growing Together is what we call our professional development offer for all teaching, support and operational staff at Aldridge Education. The offer is based on areas we wish to see our organisation develop, particularly when embedding our four school improvement levers of driving an excellent school culture, robust curriculum planning, using instructional coaching to develop curriculum delivery, and utilising data driven instruction to improve learners outcomes.

 

The vision for Growing Together is that staff will have the opportunity to get better faster, regardless of role and career stage. We want to ensure that talent is nurtured and developed at every level to shape effective organisational management, excellence in every classroom, robust support systems for staff and students, and exceptional student attainment.

 If you are a colleague from an Aldridge Education school, read on to see our full Growing Together brochure, or browse some of our highlighted courses on the sidebar on the right.

If you are an interested colleague from an external setting, please CLICK HERE 

Once you have found the course for you, email GrowingTogether@aldridgeeducation.org to book your place. Bookings are subject to our terms and conditions, which can be found on our policies page. Alternatively, please complete our Enquiry Form below.

Enquiry Form 

 

Browse our brand-new course highlights brochure: 

 

 

Browse our full course offer:

 

We hope you find a course to suit your needs. If you have any questions, or suggestions for future courses you would like to request, you can contact the Professional Development Team on GrowingTogether@aldridgeeducation.org 

The Aldridge Education Team deliver CPD of the highest quality, with strong core content adapted to the needs of the school and a house style of delivery that models outstanding practice. Participants are guided through learning that is highly interactive and can be applied in the classroom the next day."   

Training participant, Brighton Aldridge Community Academy 

Meet the Growing Together Team

Growing Together Team (ID 1261)

  • Poppy Nobes
    Head of Professional Development

    Poppy Nobes

    Poppy joined Aldridge Education as the Trust Lead for English in our London and South East region in September 2019. After graduating from a BA in English Literature at Sheffield University, she trained as a secondary English teacher through the Teach First programme in Yorkshire, going on to gain her MA in Education from the University of Manchester.

    Poppy relocated to London following her training, teaching at an Ark school for five years. During this time, she fulfilled various roles including Lead Teacher for KS3 English, acting Head of Department and leading on initial teacher training within school, supporting both the Ark teacher training and Now Teach participants.

    Additionally, Poppy contributed to the achievement of well above national average results, Summer 2019 seeing 90% of pupils achieve a grade 9-4 in English Language and English Literature. The department were also a part of the English Mastery pilot, awarded the Depth before Breadth award in the first year for the best Year 7 results in the Ark network.

    Poppy further fulfilled the part-time role as Network Lead Teacher for English Mastery, supporting schools with their successful implementation of the programme over time.

    In September 2021 Poppy took on the role of Trust Lead for Professional Development, championing the Trust's Growing Together professional development programme.

  • Ted Bunn
    Trust Lead for Professional Development (ECF)

    Ted Bunn

    Ted joined Aldridge Education as Humanities Trust Lead for London and the South East in September 2020. He is the strategic lead for humanities across the region, forming part of the central Education team developing provision across the Trust.

    Prior to joining Aldridge Education, Ted worked for Ark as the subject lead for geography across London and the South of England. Previously, Ted has worked for Oasis Community learning and before that as a Head of Department in Northamptonshire.

    Ted has a Geography Degree from Newcastle University. He is a Teach First ambassador, as well as a Fellow at the Royal Geographical Society.

  • Rachel Johnston
    Trust Lead for Professional Development (SCITT)

    Rachel Johnston

    Rachel joined Aldridge Education in April 2024 as one of our Trust Leads for Professional Development, overseeing our School Centred Initial Teacher Training. Rachel specialises in working with novice teachers and their mentors and implementing the Core Content Framework.

  • Jemma Naish-Williams
    Trust Lead for Professional Development (NPQ)

    Jemma Naish-Williams

    Jemma joined Aldridge Education as Trust Lead for Professional Development in September 2025. She leads on the Trust's professional learning strategy, with a particular focus on NPQ programmes and developing high-quality teaching and leadership across Aldridge schools.

  • Karen Hunt
    Training and National Administrator

    Karen Hunt

    Karen joined Aldridge Education as Training and National Administrator in October 2022, working with the Trust's Professional Development team and the Executive Assistant to the CEO. Karen has many years of administration and PA experience, 17 of those within the Education sector.

 


 

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