The Great Teaching Toolkit
Everything you need, to get better together.
Get better, together
Act on personalised feedback
Develop expertise
Embed great teaching
Everyone deserves a great teacher
The Great Teaching Toolkit is built on the Model for Great Teaching – a curriculum for teacher learning.
The Great Teaching Toolkit helps teachers to:
- set specific goals for improving their classroom practice, where everyone’s voice is heard.
- build understanding in areas that make the most difference.
- develop skills through modelling, instruction, safe rehearsal and feedback.
- embed habits with development cycles of deliberate practice, feedback and reflection.
Get better, together!
One of the design principles behind the Great Teaching Toolkit is that it has to be scalable: something that any school can do, that generates maximum impact for minimal cost and time. At the heart of the Toolkit is a collaborative and reciprocal approach – Great Teaching Teams.
We provide structure and guidance for teams of teachers to coach each other, focusing explicitly on their classroom practice and their individual challenges.
Build teaching expertise within your teams with courses, resources, structured activities and guided reflection through specific processes like identifying, exploring, and integrating elements of great teaching.
“Blown away with the professional dialogue across Extol Trust regarding our understanding of great teaching… This is our Golden Thread.” (Read full case study here.)
Julie Deville
CEO, Extol Trust
CEO, Extol Trust
Feedback from the most important people
Learners have more collective experience of the classroom environment and teaching practices than anyone else.
Learner surveys (accessible for reading ages 5-16+) generate feedback that allows each individual teacher to:
- Identify strengths and areas for improvement
- Set specific goals for improving their classroom practice
- Measure improvement with insights from their learners
“The survey was such a useful, informative diagnostic tool that really empowered me to take advantage and take control of my own professional learning.” (Read full case study here.)
Mike Downes
Head of History
Head of History
Developing teacher expertise
The Great Teaching Toolkit’s resource library puts hundreds of tailored resources at your teachers’ fingertips.
It includes more than 500 blogs, videos, books, podcasts and documents, curated and mapped to the Dimensions and Elements of the Model for Great Teaching.
Searching for “retrieval practice” offers resources ranging from a two-minute blog post, to a 39-minute podcast.
To build understanding in the areas that matter most for your students’ learning, the Great Teaching Toolkit’s courses all incorporate structured collaboration with colleagues. They contain activities to plan, implement and evaluate pedagogical approaches in your context.
Click on the images below to learn more about our courses!
Lead Programmes cover specialist areas of the Model. They provide a grounding in research evidence and then equip you to lead improvement to policy and practice in the following areas:
Assessment Lead Programme
Behaviour and Culture Programme
Science of Learning Programme
“Improving education at scale is hard. However, we know that teacher expertise is the key driver of student learning. Of all the things school leaders can influence, developing teacher expertise is the one that has the biggest impact for student learning.”
Professor Rob Coe
More effective feedback for teachers
Feedback can be one of the most powerful ways to improve goal-directed performance. The Great Teaching Toolkit has prioritised the development of more efficient, practical and powerful feedback tools. Use video to:
- Help teachers see their own classroom in a way that is broader, clearer and more accurate than their raw experience can provide.
- Focus attention on the areas that matter most to student learning, with a feedback rubric aligned to the Model for Great Teaching.
- Embed habits and motivate improvement through regular cycles of feedback.
Embed Great Teaching
Every student deserves a great teacher. Great teaching is for everyone.
Enter the number of teachers below to see how much a Great Teaching Toolkit membership costs.
For more than 100 licences in one school/college, or to discuss group and MAT rates across multiple schools, please contact us.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the evidence base for the Model for Great Teaching?
The Model for Great Teaching was first published in the Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review – a credible evidence summary of the elements of great teaching practice.
What support is there from Evidence Based Education?
Every school that signs up to the Toolkit is assigned their own GTT Advisor – someone who will work with you to help you get the most out of the Toolkit, whether that is a launch session with colleagues, slides for an INSET, or help getting colleagues signed in, we’ll be on hand to help!
Click here to speak with one of our GTT Advisors.
How do we know whether the Great Teaching Toolkit will work for us?
Everything in the Great Teaching Toolkit is aligned to the Model for Great Teaching – a summary of the best available research evidence on the things teachers do, know and believe that has the biggest impact on student learning.
While there is no silver bullet for professional development, the Great Teaching Toolkit is about sustained and sustainable professional development – helping every teacher to improve, no matter their starting point. The feedback tools can be used to provide insights into whether a teacher is making improvements in areas that matter most, in the eyes of their students.
Can we try the Toolkit before we buy?
Yes, you can sign up for a Great Teaching Toolkit: Starter Account, which allows you to see the platform, try a student feedback survey, and sample lessons from the courses.
Click here to create your account.
Why aren’t you doing instructional coaching in the GTT?
There is good evidence that one-to-one coaching by an expert is one of the most effective ways to improve teaching—but the key design principle behind the Great Teaching Toolkit is that it has to be scalable: something that any school can do, that generates maximum impact for minimal cost and time. Our approach retains the key ingredients of a coaching model, but is more efficient and feasible at scale.
Click here to read more from Professor Rob Coe.
The Model for Great Teaching is all about classroom practice. Is there anything about school leadership?
The Great Teaching Toolkit also includes the School Environment and Leadership survey. This is a tool to provide feedback to school leaders on the school-level factors that evidence suggests are our current best bets for school leaders to attend to in order to promote students’ learning.
Click here to find out more about the SEL survey and how it works.
How have schools implemented the Great Teaching Toolkit?
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How can I be even better next year than this?
Bangkok Patana School are now entering their second year of using the Great Teaching Toolkit (GTT). Following an initial pilot, the school are now rolling it out across all Secondary colleagues, underpinning their Professional Growth Programme. We spoke to their Secondary Principal, Matt Seddon, Assistant Principal, Luke Jones and Great Teaching Lead, Eleanor Richards about […]
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Feedback from the most important people
We recently spoke to Mike Downes, Head of History and a teacher at Dulwich College, Shanghai Pudong. The college began using the Great Teaching Toolkit in 2021 as an initial pilot of 40 to 45 staff, before rolling out more widely. This was as part of their ongoing commitment to professional development that is evidence-based […]
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“The Assessment Lead Programme is some of the best CPD I’ve done in a long, long time”
Parrenthorn High School in Manchester began using the Great Teaching Toolkit in summer 2022, focusing specifically on our Assessment Lead Programme, to try and drive whole-staff development in assessment theory and practice. We spoke to Alex Havers, Assistant Head Teacher and the school’s Coordinator, and Maria Stevens, Head of MFL, about how they are implementing […]
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The Assessment Lead Programme has been very helpful, both within my classroom and beyond it!
Jess Alfaro is a third grade teacher and Math Content Coordinator at Summit School in North Carolina, USA. Summit began using the Great Teaching Toolkit in 2022 to support their ongoing commitment to evidence-based and personal professional development of their staff. Her focus has been working with a couple of colleagues through our Assessment Lead […]
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An excellent framework to support individualised professional development
Dawn Watson is Headteacher of Eaglesfield Paddle CE Primary Academy, who joined the Great Teaching Toolkit in 2021 as part of a small group of schools across Cumbria with the support of the WELL Project (Western Excellence in Learning & Leadership). In light of the feedback from this initial group, several more schools in West […]
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Encouraging better conversations about teaching and learning
Rachel Gordon is Assistant Head (Teaching and Learning) at Eltham College. She has led the school’s professional development program, using the Great Teaching Toolkit as the framework on which all discussions about teaching are based. She manages the schools use of the GTT platform and coordinates the use of student surveys with teachers across the […]
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“Empowering staff” with their professional development
Olivia Graham is Assistant Headteacher at Queen Elizabeth II High School on the Isle of Man, having previously been Head of Maths and Director of CPD at the school. She began using the Great Teaching Toolkit with the school’s staff in September 2022, so we caught up with her to see how the first six […]
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Bespoke, targeted and relevant CPD
Ruth Stead is the Assistant Headteacher of Netherhall School, in Cumbria. Netherhall School has 800 students on roll, 39% of which are pupil premium students. Over the last 6 years, Netherhall has been on a journey from ‘special measures’ to becoming a ‘good’ school in 2018. In 2021, Ruth enrolled Netherall School on the Great […]
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Efficient and impactful professional learning
John Etty is Associate Headmaster at Auckland Grammar School, one of the first schools to adopt the Great Teaching Toolkit, having supported with the development of the student surveys in 2020. We spoke to John about how the GTT has helped inform a whole-school approach to professional development with his staff, both during lockdowns and […]
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“I would 100% recommend the GTT, no doubt about it!”
Neil Groves is Head of Humanities at Bangkok Prep School; he and his colleagues came to the Great Teaching Toolkit after having previously done the Science of Learning Programme with EBE. Here, we speak to him about this journey so far. You came across EBE before we launched the Great Teaching Toolkit via our […]
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Using the GTT means all staff are learning together
Jablai Saleh is Headteacher at Story Wood School, a primary school in Birmingham. She and her team began using the Great Teaching Toolkit in summer 2022, and we caught up with her to see how the staff were benefitting from access to the tools, courses and resources the GTT provides. How has the GTT […]
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The Great Teaching Toolkit has the potential to be game-changing for our whole-school PL
Jean-Pierre Adamson is Head of English at the German-Swiss International School in Hong Kong. Having initially engaged with the Great Teaching Toolkit through our free Starter account and checked out the Foundation Course, he joined the GTT on a solo account with one other colleague to access the full suite of resources, courses and tools. […]
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Transformative professional learning that is done “with you, not to you”
Jamie Kelleher is Head of English and Assistant Headteacher at Birchgrove Comprehensive School in Swansea. They were among the first to join the Great Teaching Toolkit on its launch in September 2021, as part of a pilot across three local authorities in Wales. Now into their second year of access, we spoke to Jamie to […]
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The GTT as personal professional development
David Cooksey works in an international school setting, and joined the Great Teaching Toolkit on an individual basis in order to fulfil his own professional development needs, as well as trialling the full offering with a view to potentially rolling it out more widely in the future. Here we speak to him about how he […]
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Using the Great Teaching Toolkit as part of an ITT programme
Teesside University’s ITT programme uses the Great Teaching Toolkit to integrate additional analysis and critique of theory, research and expert practice into their curriculum. All trainees and tutors have a GTT account, giving instant access to courses and feedback tools that help them set goals, build understanding, develop skills and embed the habits of effective […]
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The GTT is my go-to for teaching and learning!
Farmor’s School is a secondary academy in Gloucestershire. Having worked with EBE in a previous role, the school’s Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning, Claire Wells, began using the Great Teaching Toolkit in summer 2022. We caught up with her to find out how she was finding it, halfway through the academic year. How did […]
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Identifying an area of focus with student surveys
The student surveys in the Great Teaching Toolkit can be used to identify an area of focus. David Jones, Assistant Head of Wallington County Grammar School, spoke to us about how they have been using student surveys to inform professional development choices. Why did you decide to use the student surveys? For years we […]
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Using student surveys to support professional development
Student surveys are one of the feedback tools available to teachers as part of the Great Teaching Toolkit. The student surveys can be used by a teacher to gain insights into their practice, and provide indicators into what they are already great at, and what could be an area of focus to be even greater. […]
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The GTT is a must for teachers at any level!
Durham Sixth Form Centre is one of a number of schools and colleges using the Great Teaching Toolkit as part of a group led by Education Durham. With this partnership having begun almost a year ago at the time of writing, we caught up with Sue Barnard, Teacher and ITT Programme Lead at DSFC, about […]
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A common language for great teaching
First published for ISC Research, ‘A common language for great teaching’ was written by Julia Armstrong, Assistant Head for Professional Learning at Kellett Senior School Hong Kong. As part of a review of Continuous Professional Learning (CPL), the senior leadership team at Kellett School has identified the potential of using a clearly articulated common […]
