Continuing professional development (CPD) and initial teacher training (ITT) are two distinct phases of a teacher’s learning journey. ITT prepares people with no teaching qualification to enter the profession, while CPD supports qualified teachers in deepening their skills, updating their knowledge, and growing throughout their careers. The sections below explore the questions educators most commonly ask about the two.
What does continuing professional development involve for teachers?
Continuing professional development for teachers involves structured learning activities that help qualified educators maintain, expand, and refine their professional skills after they have entered the classroom. CPD can take many forms, from short workshops and online courses to extended programmes, peer observation, mentoring, and international study visits. The common thread is that the learning is intentional, ongoing, and directly connected to professional practice.
Unlike initial training, CPD is not about acquiring a licence to teach. It is about growing as an educator in response to the real challenges teachers face day to day. A teacher might pursue CPD to develop their understanding of inclusive education, explore new approaches to assessment, or learn how digital tools can support student engagement. The focus is always on improving what happens in the classroom and, by extension, improving outcomes for learners.
In the European context, CPD is increasingly tied to funded mobility programmes. Erasmus+ Key Action 1, for example, supports teachers in attending structured professional development courses abroad, giving them access to new perspectives, international networks, and evidence-based teaching practices they can bring back to their own schools.
What is initial teacher training designed to achieve?
Initial teacher training is designed to equip people who have not yet taught professionally with the foundational knowledge, practical skills, and formal qualifications they need to work as a teacher. ITT programmes typically combine academic study of pedagogy and subject knowledge with supervised classroom placements, and they culminate in a recognised teaching qualification.
The primary goal of ITT is competence and qualification. A trainee teacher needs to demonstrate that they can plan lessons, manage a classroom, assess student progress, and meet national or regional standards before they are authorised to teach independently. ITT is therefore a gatekeeping stage as much as a learning one, ensuring that every person who enters the profession meets a defined baseline of readiness.
ITT programmes vary considerably across countries in their length, structure, and entry requirements, but they share this core purpose: transforming a subject-matter expert or a career changer into a qualified professional who is ready for the demands of a real classroom.
Who is eligible for CPD versus initial teacher training?
Initial teacher training is for people who do not yet hold a teaching qualification and want to enter the profession. CPD, by contrast, is for qualified teachers, school leaders, and other education professionals who are already working in the sector and want to continue learning within their career.
In practice, this means ITT has formal entry requirements tied to academic qualifications and, in many systems, subject expertise or prior degrees. CPD has far more flexible eligibility. Most CPD programmes require only that participants are working in an educational role, though some advanced programmes or funded schemes like Erasmus+ may have additional criteria related to the applicant’s institution or country of employment.
School leaders, teaching assistants, curriculum coordinators, and education administrators can all access CPD, even if they are not classroom teachers themselves. This broader eligibility reflects the understanding that improving education requires developing everyone who works within a school, not just those who stand in front of a class.
How do the learning outcomes of CPD and ITT differ?
The learning outcomes of ITT are standardised and qualification-focused. Trainees must meet defined competency frameworks to pass, and the outcome is a formal credential that authorises them to teach. CPD outcomes are far more varied and are shaped by the individual teacher’s needs, their school’s priorities, and the specific programme they undertake.
ITT outcomes tend to be broad and foundational, covering classroom management, lesson planning, safeguarding, assessment, and subject pedagogy. These outcomes are essentially the same for every trainee within a given system, because every new teacher needs the same baseline.
CPD outcomes, on the other hand, are deliberately specialised. A teacher attending a course on STEAM education will come away with different skills than a colleague who has focused on special educational needs or sustainable development. The depth is greater precisely because the breadth is narrower. CPD also produces outcomes that are harder to measure formally, such as increased confidence, stronger professional networks, and a refreshed sense of motivation, all of which have a real impact on teaching quality even if they do not appear on a certificate.
Can initial teacher training count as professional development?
Initial teacher training can inform a teacher’s ongoing professional identity, but it does not typically count as CPD in the formal sense. CPD is generally defined as learning that takes place after qualification, and most professional bodies, funding schemes, and school systems treat ITT and CPD as separate categories with separate purposes and separate recording requirements.
That said, some elements of ITT, particularly reflective practice, research literacy, and subject-specific pedagogy, lay the groundwork for a teacher’s lifelong professional learning. Teachers who develop strong habits of reflection during ITT are often better equipped to engage meaningfully with CPD later in their careers.
There are also edge cases worth noting. If a qualified teacher undertakes a further qualification, such as a postgraduate certificate in a specialist area, some institutions may count this towards CPD hours, depending on local policy. The key question is always whether the learning is building on existing professional practice or establishing the foundation for entering the profession in the first place.
What types of CPD are most valuable for experienced teachers?
The most valuable CPD for experienced teachers tends to be specific, practical, and connected to genuine professional challenges rather than generic or purely theoretical. Research consistently points to CPD that involves collaboration with peers, direct application in the classroom, and sustained engagement over time as producing the most lasting impact on teaching practice.
For experienced educators, the following types of CPD tend to deliver the most meaningful growth:
- International study courses and school visits: Seeing how education is approached in other countries challenges assumptions and introduces genuinely new strategies. Our Erasmus+ structured courses in Finland and Estonia are designed precisely for this, combining expert-led sessions with real school visits and hands-on workshops.
- Specialist subject or theme courses: Deep dives into areas like artificial intelligence in education, inclusive teaching, or STEAM give experienced teachers the depth they can no longer find in introductory-level training.
- Peer observation and coaching: Working alongside colleagues in a structured, reflective way builds professional dialogue and surfaces habits that are hard to examine in isolation.
- Leadership and school development programmes: For teachers moving into or already in leadership roles, CPD focused on school culture, strategic planning, and staff wellbeing addresses the specific demands of those positions.
- Action research and inquiry-based learning: Investigating a question from their own classroom gives experienced teachers agency over their development and produces insights directly relevant to their context.
The common thread across all of these is relevance. Experienced teachers bring years of classroom knowledge to any learning experience, and the CPD that serves them best is the kind that takes that expertise seriously and challenges them to build on it rather than starting from scratch.