Free training and development for ESOL practitioners and teacher educators/development of teacher trainer network.

Dear Colleague, 

After a summer of planning and consultation, Learning Unlimited are delighted to announce further details of the Education and Training Foundation’s free New to ESOL CPD and training the trainer programme for 2020-21. As you may know from previous communications, there are three strands to this year’s programme:

1)    Follow-up training for participants and institutions who/which participated in the Feb- March run - intended to share good practice and deepen people’s knowledge/skills

2)    New training to engage new institutions and participants in the programme. 

3)    Development and training for ESOL teacher educators that will seek to develop sustainable regional teams of teacher-educators able to deliver training specifically focused on teaching New to ESOL learners. (We are looking for approximately 5 trainers per each of the nine regions).

Strands 1 and 2, will be delivered remotely until such time as it is safe to return to face to face provision. We will use a flipped approach involving a combination of three modes:

• Initially, a series of 10 webcasts that will be freely viewable via YouTube. These will be short content-rich videos that aim to cover the main themes of the programme. (An overview of these themes can be downloaded here: New to ESOL programme content)
• Webcasts will be published and accessible to all by the end of September.
• These will be followed by a series of free webinars linked to each of the themes between October 2020 and the end of March 2021. These webinars will provide participants with the opportunity to discuss, explore and develop the content of the webcasts, and will aim to provide principled and practical ideas for application to the teaching of New to ESOL learners. These webinars will be open to all practitioners who are teaching New to ESOL learners, but numbers will be limited to enable full and meaningful participation. Webinars will be advertised via follow-up emails and the Education and Training Foundation website/booking system. We will endeavour to repeat popular webinars where resource allows.
• Learning Unlimited will concurrently offer individual organisations/groups of practitioners the provision of free one-off highly focused consultancy-style webinars to provide support with more local/specialised New to ESOL related challenges. These will be discussion based, and we recommend maximum groups of between 5-10 participants. To discuss the possibility of a webinar for your organisation/group please contact John Sutter directly at [log in to unmask]

Strand 3 - development and training for ESOL teacher educators – will also be delivered remotely, at least until circumstances change. We are now open for applications to this part of the programme (closing date October 1^st), for which a  summary of the content and joining  requirements can be found here: Teacher training strand: criteria and information

The application form can be downloaded here: Teacher trainer application form

For any further information or queries, please contact John directly at 

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 We look forward to working with you!

 Best