Every Professional Development Qualification (PDQ) Centre appoints a Programme Leader who is responsible for designing and managing the programme(s). The programme leader is accredited by Cambridge and is pivotal to the quality and success of the Cambridge PDQ programme.
The role is wide-ranging, from designing and developing the programme to liaising with mentors, school leadership and Cambridge.
For example, the programme leader will:
- design the programme in the centre to ensure that it meets candidate needs and the syllabus requirements
- organise the programme learning environment
- co-ordinate with the people involved in the programme, such as trainers and mentors, and the facilities, training materials and equipment
- find and develop appropriate learning resources to ensure that candidates engage with concepts and principles to meet the assessment criteria
- select and use appropriate formative assessment activities bearing in mind the portfolio requirements
- monitor candidates’ progress throughout the programme and provide regular feedback to help them develop
- sign off the candidate work for assessment.
Being an effective programme leader is first and foremost about shaping and supporting professional learning to have impact on the quality of teaching and leadership in schools.
- Programme design
A successful Cambridge Professional Development Programme (Cambridge PDQ) is well-balanced and well-sequenced. The elements of guided learning, individual and collaborative learning, and work-based learning should come together into an experience which transforms thinking and practice.
- Our guidelines for programme design and the supporting resources give programme leaders and their colleagues a clear framework and content for designing and delivering a quality programme that meets our expectations.
- All Cambridge PDQ programmes share essential features. However, within our guidelines, we encourage programme leaders to design programmes that best suit the context and the needs of their teachers, leaders and schools.
We provide dedicated resources to help programme leaders plan and run a Cambridge Professional Development Qualification (Cambridge PDQ) programme.
Each nominated programme leader must complete the Programme Leader Induction course run by Cambridge. This is an eleven week interactive and facilitated online course and runs throughout the year. During the course the nominated programme leader produces an overview of their programme plan and a programme rationale and submits to Cambridge for review and feedback. Once they get accredited, the programme leaders are given access to our dedicated support platform for ongoing support for their programme.