Leaders✱ from designated teacher to designated leader
A year-long leadership programme for designated teachers, commissioned by virtual schools. Your teachers learn practical tools chosen for their schools, learn how to teach them, and lead training for their whole staff.
a designated teacher for children in care is a legal requirement in every maintained school and academy
Every school must have a designated teacher for children in care and previously in care. It is a statutory leadership role, yet it often comes with little training and little support. This programme gives designated teachers the knowledge, the tools and the facilitation skills to pass what they learn on to every teacher, so every child in care, every child with a social worker and every child who has experienced adversity is better understood.
Across the year, each teacher builds their knowledge, learns the tools, then passes them on to colleagues.
Understanding the children in their school: the barriers they face in education, how children develop, and the messages in their behaviour.
Nine practical tools chosen from their schools’ audits, each with a workbook, facilitation guide, slides and video.
How to plan training with each tool’s facilitation guide, and lead a full training day for their whole staff at September INSET.
A year-long programme that turns designated teachers into designated leaders, with tools and training built around what their own schools need.
This is not a small group with a specialist need. It is a cohort every teacher is already teaching.
children in England is a child in need. Roughly one in every classroom.
children in care have identified special educational needs, against 1 in 5 of all pupils.
children in care has moved school in the last two years.
mentions of trauma, attachment or children in care in the Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework.
Sources: Department for Education, Children in need 2025; Outcomes for children in need, including children looked after, 2024 to 25; Stability measures for children looked after in England, 2025; Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework, January 2024.
The programme is built around what your schools need, not around what we already have on the shelf.
In the first online session, each teacher completes a behaviour audit and a data audit in their own school, using the previous year’s data.
We analyse the audits across the whole cohort.
We pick the nine tools from our library of 26 that best answer what the audits show, three for each term.
Each teacher learns each tool, and how to train colleagues to use it.
Teachers use the facilitation guides to plan and lead a full training day for their whole staff.
Two a term, starting at the beginning of the academic year. Every term follows plan, do, review: teachers plan in a session, try it in school, then review it together.
90 minutes, after school
Meet the cohort and see how the year works. Explore who children in care, children with a social worker and those who have experienced adversity are, and start the behaviour and data audits in your own school.
90 minutes, after school
Review how the first three tools went in your school, and share what is working with the cohort.
90 minutes, after school
A further topic chosen from the audits, and a review of how the new tools are working in school.
Full day, 10am to 3:30pm
How children develop, what their behaviour is telling us and how to respond. Then the first three tools chosen from your cohort’s audits, ready to use back in school. Teachers are then set up on the online platform.
Full day, 10am to 3:30pm
Topics chosen from the audits: what teachers in your schools most need to know about the children we support, plus the next three tools.
Full day, 10am to 3:30pm
The final three tools. Then each teacher uses the facilitation guides to plan a full training day for September INSET, and rehearses it in small groups.
Your teachers complete the audit. We then choose the 9 tools from this library of 26 that best fit what the audits show. Click any tool to see what it is.
Playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy. A way of being with a child that lowers threat and keeps the relationship open, especially when things are hard.
Comes with a workbook, facilitation guide, slide deck and video, so teachers can teach it to colleagues.
Choose any tool to see it here.
Every tool has its own workbook, built on Story, Theory and Action. During the programme, teachers have the nine tools they are taught. When it ends, every designated teacher gets all 26 workbooks for a further 12 months. Turn the pages of five of them below.
By the end of the year, you have more than a trained group of individuals.
The programme grew from our work with Darlington Virtual School and is running now with two virtual schools.
2026 to 27 cohort
Designated teachers from schools across Wakefield, with the online sessions on Thursday afternoons and the face-to-face days in the second half of each term.
2026 to 27 cohort
Designated teachers from schools across Salford, with face-to-face days at The Court House, Worsley.
Designated teachers for children in care and previously in care (the statutory wording is looked-after and previously looked-after children). Statutory guidance says that person must be a qualified teacher, or the head or acting head.
Both. Three face-to-face days and three 90-minute online sessions, two a term, plus the online platform from the first face-to-face day and 12 months’ access to all 26 tools after the programme.
Your virtual school holds the list and invites schools directly. We don’t take bookings from schools.
The programme is commissioned by the virtual school for the whole cohort. Ask us for an itemised cost.
A venue for the three face-to-face days, the list of designated teachers, and help promoting the programme to your schools. We give you a marketing toolkit, co-branded with your logo.
The behaviour and data audits at the start give each school a baseline. We capture them again at the end of the programme to explore what has changed, and every school has a full INSET training day written and delivered by its own designated teacher.
The online platform holds the content of every session, so they can catch up before the next one.
Yes. Talk to us about how that would work for your region.
Every programme starts at the beginning of the academic year, and runs through to September INSET.
The sessions, the 26 tools, the online platform and the Darlington case study, ready to share with your Virtual School Head.
If it didn’t start, open the brochure here.
Tell us about your service and what you need, and we’ll reply within 3 working days.
