City College Plymouth Builds Confidence and Consistency in Teaching and Learning

City College Plymouth delivers education and training across an unusually broad and diverse range of curriculum areas, from defence engineering, automotive and boatbuilding to hair and beauty, ESOL, media, hospitality and Future Skills provision for previously disengaged 14 – 16 learners.

The College works closely with major regional employers and industry partners, including Babcock International Group and luxury yacht manufacturer Princess Yachts, and recently secured a £10 million investment through its designation as a Defence Technical Excellence College.

With more than 360 teaching staff working across highly practical, vocational and academic settings, creating a more connected and consistent approach to professional learning had become an increasingly important priority.

When Naomi Tucker joined as Head of Teaching, Learning and Assessment (TLA) in September 2025, she became central to shaping the College’s evolving approach to professional learning. Alongside leading teacher training, coaching and mentoring, learning walks and observations, Naomi also oversees digital learning and the College’s development and tutorial teams. Several members of the wider teaching and learning team had also joined the College at a similar time, helping create momentum around a more inclusive and consistent approach to staff development. 

Support for teaching development already existed in different forms, but Naomi and the wider team wanted a more structured and connected framework — one that could provide a shared language around teaching practice and professional learning college-wide.

Importantly, the goal was not to create a top-down model of CPD. The team wanted a platform that would give teachers ownership of their own professional development, while also enabling coaches to provide more targeted support and giving leaders clearer oversight of engagement and development across the College. 

For Naomi and the teaching and learning team, the HOW2 Platform aligned closely with the College’s focus on creating a more inclusive and developmental model of professional learning, balancing staff autonomy with clearer strategic oversight.

“The overall thing that we are trying to get across is that we are doing things with our educators, not doing things to them,” Naomi explains. ​“HOW2 works really nicely with that because it gives staff the autonomy but also gives us the oversight of what we are doing.” 

The rollout of the HOW2 Platform was carefully planned and involved the College’s six coaches, teacher-training teams and curriculum leaders. Before launch, access to the Platform was initially given to the coaching team, allowing them to build confidence with the Platform, receive additional training from HOW2’s Damian Rollinson Small, and begin developing HOW2 SETs — curated collections of teaching techniques aligned to different teaching priorities and curriculum contexts.

The launch itself involved breakout sessions with staff groups of around 80 educators at a time. Coaches introduced staff to the Platform’s tools and features while contextualising HOW2 techniques around different teaching environments and learner needs. ​“We wanted there to be someone in every room during the January rollout who was already positive and familiar with the Platform,” Naomi explains.

The HOW2 Barriers to Progress Prioritisation Tool also formed part of the launch process. The tool enables educators to reflect on the barriers affecting learner progress in their own classrooms and links them to relevant HOW2 techniques within the Platform. Aggregated themes from the responses helped Naomi and the coaching team identify common areas where staff wanted support — such as questioning, behaviour routines or learner engagement — allowing coaching conversations, SETs and CPD activities to be shaped around priorities identified by educators themselves.

A key advantage of the HOW2 Platform was its ability to integrate into the College’s wider teaching and learning frameworks, supporting existing coaching, observation and professional development processes rather than sitting separately from them. ​“We have linked HOW2 seamlessly to our observations and learning walks processes as part of the feedback process,” Naomi explains. ​“Educators are signposted to relevant HOW2s and SETs to support their CPD.”

Each term begins with a learning walk, followed by 1:1 coaching conversations where coaches use HOW2 techniques, Notes and Nudges to support staff development. Follow-up learning walks are then used to review progress. ​“The coaches have really embraced the Platform and are driving its uptake,” Naomi says. ​“They are constantly reinforcing it.”

The Platform’s Notes feature has become an important part of coaching conversations, allowing staff and coaches to share reflections and track progress collaboratively. ​“The coaches really like the Notes feature,” says Naomi. ​“Teachers can fill it out without the coach being there, update their progress on the HOW2 Skills Exchange, and reflect on how techniques are working.” 

This developmental approach aligns closely with the College’s wider teaching and learning strategy. ​“There is no judgement in an observation,” Naomi explains. ​“It’s about fact and what’s seen. It’s not about opinion or bias.”

One of the strongest areas of engagement has been within teacher training, where around 70 trainee teachers are using the Platform. Teacher training teams created curriculum-specific SETs aligned to the different qualification levels offered across the college, including Levels 3, 4 and 5.

“We’ve seen excellent uptake and impact within our teacher training,” Naomi explains. ​“Everyone is accessing HOW2 regularly across teacher training and can see the benefits of the Platform.”

For early-career teachers, the accessibility and flexibility of the Platform have been particularly valuable. ​“The fact that the input required is short — 15 minutes a week — really helps.”

Naomi also believes the Platform has helped vocational teachers build confidence around their own pedagogy by giving structure and language to techniques they may already be using instinctively.

“Teachers are often doing things really well without necessarily knowing the terminology behind it,” she explains. ​“For example, teachers in automotive might already be excellent at questioning techniques but didn’t realise that’s what they were doing. HOW2 helps formalise and legitimise their approach, which really boosts confidence.”

One feature that has gained particularly strong engagement at City College Plymouth is the integrated HOW2 AI Assistant, which helps educators adapt teaching techniques, plan lessons and generate classroom activities tailored to different learner needs, teaching contexts and curriculum areas.

Naomi explains that the AI Assistant has helped staff create more engaging and adaptable approaches for students who may struggle with more traditional teaching methods. ​“There are a lot of students who struggle with generic teaching approaches,” she says. ​“The Platform’s AI Assistant has helped educators support these students.”

The tool has proved especially popular within Hair and Beauty, where staff have used the AI Assistant to redesign more theory-heavy sessions for practical, visually focused learning environments. ​“These are visual, practical teachers who have loved the AI Assistant,” Naomi says. ​“They are using it to really help them plan their lessons.”

Naomi highlights several examples of emerging impact across different curriculum areas, particularly where educators are working in more challenging or highly specialised teaching environments.

One example is within the College’s Future Skills provision, which supports home-schooled 14 – 16-year-olds and young people who previously struggled to engage with mainstream education. According to Naomi, working in these settings can be particularly challenging for newer teachers, especially around behaviour management and classroom expectations.

Within this provision, Peter Cast, Training Officer, worked closely with his coach, Thom Boulton, using the HOW2 Platform to implement techniques linked to classroom management and behavioural expectations. Alongside targeted HOW2 techniques, the support also included peer sharing and opportunities to observe experienced colleagues in practice.

“Using the HOW2 techniques alongside coaching, peer sharing and learning from experienced colleagues has led to significant progress,” Naomi explains.

This example also highlights the important role coaches have played in reinforcing and extending the use of the Platform across the College. Thom has since become one of the College’s highest HOW2 users and is now helping lead work linking HOW2 techniques to the College’s new EIF toolkit.

Just six months into the rollout, City College Plymouth is already seeing strong engagement across coaching, teacher training and curriculum teams, with HOW2 now embedded across multiple areas of the College’s teaching and learning framework.

The next stage of the rollout will focus on increasing the use of the HOW2 Skills Exchange and Notes features, alongside supporting staff to create their own SETs and share practice across departments.

For Naomi, one of the biggest strengths of the Platform has been its ability to create a more consistent approach to professional learning across the College, bringing together coaching, teacher development and curriculum practice.

“A huge part of this has been creating a more standardised and connected approach to CPD,” she says. ​“HOW2 has helped bring together the coaching, teaching and development work taking place across the College into one shared approach.”