Your Summer Term AI CPD Reading List for 2026
May 26, 2026
Summer term is often the last realistic window for school leaders and AI leads to do calm, strategic reading before September decisions arrive. This reading list is organised by the choices schools need to make, not by whichever tool is making headlines. It focuses on policy, safeguarding, procurement, privacy and practical implementation, with a short note on what each item helps you decide. Use it to turn scattered AI news into a clearer plan for governance, rollout and staff development before the new academic year begins.
Half-Term CPD: AI Safety Essentials
February 24, 2026
This half-term self-study pack helps educators turn fast-moving AI safety headlines into practical safeguarding action. It brings together four major developments, from youth-facing AI companion risks to prompt injection and wider system-level safety findings, and translates them into a clear CPD sequence that can be completed in under an hour. The article ends with a ready-to-run 20-minute staff scenario, plus debrief prompts for DSLs, senior leaders and classroom staff who want to strengthen school AI safeguarding without needing specialist technical knowledge.
January INSET: Practical AI by Department
January 6, 2026
January is the right moment to move school AI training from broad awareness to practical, low-risk use. This workshop plan sets out a shared 90-minute INSET session that every department can join, using free-tier tools and clear safeguards. It includes parallel pathways for reluctant and confident staff, realistic use cases across teaching, pastoral and admin work, and a simple first-half-term implementation model. The goal is not novelty, but consistent adoption that saves time, improves quality and stays within sensible privacy rules.
January INSET AI Policy Sprint Pack
December 29, 2025
January is a practical moment to refresh your school’s AI acceptable use policy, especially after a busy autumn term and new governance developments. This sprint pack turns policy review into a focused 90-minute INSET session, with clear discussion prompts, lift-and-adapt clauses, and implementation steps for the first month back. It also highlights what has changed for 2026, including EU AI Act phase-in, updated DfE guidance, and the rise of long-context and agent-like tools.
October half-term AI CPD in a box
October 16, 2025
Half-term CPD often becomes a pile of tabs, good intentions, and no classroom change. This ‘CPD in a box’ gives you two self-study routes (5-day or 10-day) that end with a small, auditable micro-credential portfolio: clear artefacts, short reflections, and practical impact notes. It is designed for minimum-data workflows, a single tool stack, and human sign-off, so you can implement safely without adding workload.
INSET AI Workshop: Three Micro-Routines
August 25, 2025
This ready-to-run INSET Day workshop helps staff move from general AI awareness to three agreed, policy-aligned micro-routines: lesson planning, feedback preparation, and parent/carer communications. It centres on one shared safety protocol so staff can use AI confidently without drifting into risky data use, unreliable outputs, or inconsistent practice. You’ll get a choose-your-length run sheet, a slide-by-slide deck outline, activities that produce tangible artefacts, and a 30-day implementation plan with simple evidence capture to evaluate impact on workload and quality.
ECT/NQT AI First-Term Operating Manual
July 18, 2025
This guide is a practical first-term “operating manual” for ECTs/NQTs using AI safely and sustainably. You’ll set a small number of default micro-routines for planning, differentiation, feedback preparation and parent communication—each designed to take around ten minutes and reduce decision fatigue. You’ll also get clear red lines for data protection, safeguarding, assessment integrity and copyright, plus a week-by-week checklist to align with school policy. The aim is simple: protect pupils, protect your professionalism, and protect your workload and wellbeing.
Summer AI CPD Roadmap for September Impact
June 27, 2025
Summer CPD can easily become a scattergun list of courses, webinars and half-read articles that never makes it into classroom practice. This roadmap treats AI learning as a September-ready implementation plan: one course, one event, one reading strand and two tiny classroom pilots. You’ll leave summer with a simple Personal Learning Plan, clear safeguards, and lightweight evidence that stands up in appraisal and SLT conversations within the first three weeks back.
Building AI Foundations for Next Year
June 13, 2025
A strong September start with AI rarely comes from a big launch. It comes from small, agreed foundations: clear rules, shared language, consistent routines, and a tool stack people can actually use. This six-week summer-term “AI foundations sprint” turns end-of-year audit findings into practical infrastructure: a one-page policy addendum, student norms, staff micro-routines, a governed prompt library, and a light-touch curriculum map showing where AI is permitted, taught, and assessed.
Term 2 AI After-Action Review Template
March 27, 2025
Term 2 often leaves schools with a trail of AI experiments: a few wins, a few worries, and lots of half-finished ideas. This 60-minute “AI After-Action Review” (AAR) is a practical retrospective that helps you turn scattered trials into 3–5 agreed Term 3 routines. It is deliberately evidence-light and focused on leading indicators you can capture quickly: time saved, learning quality, equity, integrity, and safeguarding. You’ll leave with clear keep/kill/scale decisions, named owners, and a 30-day check-in.
Teacher Workload Crisis: Can AI Help?
March 13, 2025
Teacher workload is not a motivation problem; it is a systems problem. AI can reduce time spent on certain high-frequency tasks, but it can also create new work through verification, reformatting, and tool sprawl. This article offers a workload-first “task map” showing where AI savings are genuinely plausible and where they are reliably illusory. You’ll also find a ready-to-run 30-day micro-pilot with guardrails for privacy, safeguarding, quality, and policy alignment, ending with a clear keep/kill decision on three core workflows.
What GPT-5 Might Mean for Schools
February 17, 2025
“GPT-5” is less a single product announcement and more a stress test for how ready schools are to procure, govern and use fast-improving AI safely. This article maps plausible capability jumps—longer context, stronger reasoning, more reliable multimodal understanding and early agentic actions—to everyday school processes that could be disrupted. It then offers a practical 30/60/90-day readiness plan, plus a leader-friendly checklist to update policy, vendor questions, staff training and classroom routines without committing to any one tool.
February Half-Term CPD: AI Courses & Credentials
February 12, 2025
Half-term is a rare chance to build AI confidence without the weekly rush, but not all “AI for teachers” courses carry the same weight in appraisal or CPD logs. This buyer’s guide helps you choose credentials that stand up to scrutiny by focusing on evidence of learning, classroom transfer, and policy safety. You’ll find a practical selection rubric, three choose-one pathways (beginner, classroom practice, leadership), and a curated shortlist with proof of learning and caveats. There’s also a time-boxed five-day plan and a one-page outcomes checklist you can submit as CPD evidence.
Building AI Workflows That Stick
January 13, 2025
Many schools now have pockets of AI experimentation, but few have sustainable, whole‑school workflows that genuinely save time and improve teaching. This playbook is for school and college leaders who want to move beyond scattered pilots and build 3–5 core AI workflows that staff actually keep using. Focusing on governance, process design and behaviour change, it shows how to choose high‑leverage use cases, co‑design them with staff, integrate them into existing systems, and monitor impact lightly but consistently so AI becomes “the way we do things here”, not another short‑lived initiative.
AI Resolutions for Teachers
December 30, 2024
Term 2 is when good intentions usually collide with reality. This practical AI resolutions checklist helps you turn New Year enthusiasm into six weeks of tiny, time‑boxed habits that actually survive once school gets busy. Each habit takes about ten minutes to set up, has clear boundaries, and comes with “stop if…” rules so you stay in control. Use it to test AI for planning, marking, in‑lesson support and communication without overhauling your whole practice – and finish the half‑term with a clear decision about what to keep, tweak or drop.