The cost to train as a Facilitator varies depending on whether it is offered via live webinar or face-to-face, and location for face-to-face training.  There are multi-place discounts available. For exact prices please contact Tactical Steps Education.

While Tactical Steps Education is delighted to come to your school to train your entire staff the most popular training option is Facilitator training. Under a licence agreement Facilitators are certified to cascade training to any member of staff and to support them as they begin to unwrap activities. Facilitators get a complete PD package making it easy to train other teachers.

This model is more efficient economically as Facilitators can train your entire staff and incoming teachers in subsequent years, providing sustainability. It allows for increased flexibility as Facilitators are in-house experts who know your school's needs and can reflect this in the teacher workshops. They are on site to coach and mentor staff to ensure new knowledge and practice becomes embedded. As in-house experts there is so much they can do to support teachers as they gain new knowledge and approaches, embedding these resources into common practice.

Over three intensive days face-to-face, or twlelve hours of webinars, Facilitators complete the teacher workshops that they will, in turn, deliver to their staff. They have extended time to reflect during these workshops so they can plan not just how to use them in their own classes but how to deliver the workshops to teachers.

They explore the additional activities contained in the texts / workbooks which are not covered in the teacher workshops. In this way they are prepared to expand their use of activities and coach teachers in them once they are ready to move beyond the activities covered in the teacher workshops.

Finally, they attend sessions designed to help them understand the role of the Facilitator, specifically how to train other teachers and how to support them once they have been trained. Learning is not an event. Embedding a resource takes time and a skilled and prepared Facilitators is essential.

Facilitators get the entire professional development package to be able to train as many teachers as you wish. This includes presentations, guided notes, files for hand-outs, wall charts, certificates, and video footage if available for the resource in question. They get attendance sheets, checklists, everything that Tactical Steps Education uses to train teachers, so there is nothing that a Facilitator has to create to be able to deliver the training to staff.

There is no requirement to train your entire staff and certainly not to train them all at once, but workbooks / texts will be required for each teacher trained. Post training, teachers will use these books daily in their lesson planning and explore the extra activities not covered in the training over time. These are available at a discounted rate through Facilitators and are a very small additional investment to ensure teachers are properly resourced to use the materials effectively for the life of their teaching career. The cost of training a Facilitator and purchasing an entire set of resources for teachers you train often averages out to less than £80 GBP or $175 AUD per teacher.

There is nothing to buy for students.

Choose a teacher who is enthusiastic and comfortable with training and supporting other teachers, someone who is committed to teaching, committed to students and committed to the school. Having a strong literacy background is an asset but not a requirement.

If training more than one Facilitator consider training Facilitators from different teaching disciplines and make it a truly cross curricular experience. If possible, train a member of the management team, particularly if that person has some teaching duties.

A single Facilitator can deliver training to any number of teachers over time. However, it will be difficult for a single Facilitator to support large numbers of staff once they have been trained.

As a general rule it is always best to train at least two people, as they can work together and support each other. This also builds in continuity for schools. Consider training a Facilitator for every 25 to 30 members of staff you wish to train and support. There is a 15% discount for any Facilitators trained beyond the first on any given Facilitator course.

Tactical Steps Education wants schools to have the best experience possible and get optimal results. We guard against pitfalls which could negatively impact training such as cutting out portions out of the training, trying to deliver it in less than the suggested time, or trying to add too much to these already very full workshops.

The resources and the PD delivered by Tactical Steps Education are copyrighted. Trained Facilitators have access to a complete, professionally created PD package in order to be able to train teachers effectively. This is done through a licence agreement to protect the integrity of the resource and ensure high quality training.

Tactical Steps Education recognises that Facilitators will want to customise the training for their context, which is one of the key advantages of Facilitator training. How this can be done while still maintaining the quality and integrity of the PD is discussed on the Facilitator course.

Schools decide who they should train, how many they train, and when, based on their own needs. Ideally all teachers, teaching assistants and school managers will be trained over time, providing a consistency of approach, language and experience across the entire school.

Schools are advised to set aside enough time to deliver the training properly, to a manageable number of people in each session. If you must train a large group at once consider having an appropriate number of Facilitators on hand.
The following are some suggestions for how to roll out training:


A) Some schools train everyone, all at once, in all three workshops on the one day. This is easy to organise, there are no gaps in learning, and you get results more quickly as everyone is one board at once. This shows staff you are serious about making a difference to students' literacy and that it is everyone's role.

B) Some schools train everyone but do not deliver all the workshops on the one day. Some only deliver workshops one and two to give staff a bit more time to reflect and plan. When they come back to workshop three at a later date, everyone is comfortable with new approaches. Some only deliver one workshop at a time to avoid overloading teachers. These small bites with spaced learning provide an opportunity for between session tasks and great feedback sessions at the beginning of the next workshop.

C) Some schools train only a small group of teachers at first. Please select the first cohort of teachers carefully and avoid only training your English teachers first. Consider enthusiastic teachers from various departments, not necessarily only the Heads of Departments. These champions help staff understand that literacy is everyone's responsibility and see how these resources support learning in other content areas.

This depends very much on the skills and resources of a particular Facilitator. Learning is not an event. While this list is not exhaustive Facilitators can do any or all of the following:  • model lessons
• peer evaluate lessons
• survey students about their needs pre and post use of the resource
• collate lessons from each department and share them
• celebrate and share lessons and experiences in coffee mornings, staff meetings, online, or through the school newsletter
• plan key moments around when to train, such as upcoming inspections
• unpack school data for literacy to make strategic decisions about which activities to use
• unpack data for various subject areas or help teachers to do the same, to understand which literacy activities will support the correct strategies / skills to improve achievement
• video lessons to share
• have top up sessions for absent or new staff
• have refresher sessions where portions of the workshop are repeated
• have sessions to introduce staff to activities not covered in the teacher workshops
• share what they are doing and the success with the school, the parents, and other schools
• create a group of champions and lead this group
• generate pre and post data
• create an action project and publish the results
• align the resources with your school's curriculum and embed it is lesson plans

One great way to do this is to provide them even just a little release time to plan, support teachers, and network with other Facilitators. If you have more than one Facilitator please consider scheduling their planning time together.

There are many variables affecting results. Generally, you will see anecdotal differences very quickly. Teachers often get positive feedback the very first time they use these resources with students. Statistically measurable improvements may take a few months, or even a year. This depends on how consistently the resource is used, how its use is embedded and supported, and how concrete a school's use of assessment data is. Schools have seen marked improvement in just a few months in action research projects.