Keeping on top of training is one of those jobs that sounds straightforward until you’re responsible for it.
Every school needs to make sure staff complete the right training at the right time and that there’s clear evidence when needed. But when you’re juggling new starters, changing guidance, refresher training and busy school calendars, keeping everything organised can quickly become a job in itself.
For Multi-Academy Trusts, the challenge is even greater. Maintaining a consistent approach across several schools, while still meeting each school’s individual needs, takes time, coordination and reliable reporting.
During a recent iAM Academy customer webinar, schools and trusts asked us how we’d help solve some of their everyday challenges, while managing staff learning. So, we’ve pulled together some of those questions, plus other common ones, and answered them here. We’ve included practical advice about how to make training easier, too.
It’s rarely because schools don’t value training. More often, it’s because finding time for it is difficult.
You know it, and we know it. Teachers have lessons to deliver. Teaching assistants are working with pupils. Lunchtime supervisors, office staff, site teams and leadership all have different responsibilities and different schedules. Getting everyone into the same training room at the same time simply isn’t realistic.
One ‘teacher training’ or ‘inset’ day per term isn’t enough, in honesty.
On top of that, there isn’t just one piece of training to organise. Schools need to keep up with safeguarding, health and safety, medical conditions, behaviour, data protection, fire safety and much more. Particularly now Benedict’s Law is coming into play. Some training is role-specific, some needs regular refreshers, and guidance can change during the year.
That’s why many schools are moving away from spreadsheets, paper records and shared folders towards a system that keeps everything together.
With iAM Academy, staff can complete short, school-focused courses when it suits their timetable, while leaders can assign training, monitor progress and keep records in one place. Instead of spending time working out who still needs what, you have a clear view of training across your whole organisation.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
Some subjects are best delivered in person. Practical first aid, physical intervention and certain specialist skills often benefit from hands-on instruction and discussion. These are the sort of things that should take place on inset/training days.
For many mandatory topics, however, online learning offers far more flexibility. Staff can complete training around their working day, revisit it when they need a refresher, and new starters don’t have to wait for the next scheduled training session.
The most effective approach is usually a combination of both.
iAM Academy helps schools manage that balance. Online learning can be assigned immediately, while external training records can also be stored alongside iAM Academy courses, giving leaders a complete picture of each member of staff’s training history, rather than information being spread across different systems, spreadsheets, box files, and filing cabinets.
Not everyone in school needs exactly the same learning.
A site manager’s training requirements are very different from those of a lunchtime supervisor, office admin, or teacher. Trying to remember who needs which courses quickly becomes difficult, particularly as staff change roles or new colleagues join the school.
A good starting point is to group training together around roles, rather than individuals. That way, when someone joins your organisation, they receive the right learning from day one, rather than relying on someone to remember to assign those individual courses.
That’s where Learning Pathways can save a huge amount of time.
Rather than assigning courses one by one, schools can create structured pathways that include the courses, policies, and guidance relevant to a particular role. New starters, existing staff and whole teams can then be assigned consistent learning with clear completion dates, helping ensure nothing important is missed.
Consistency becomes much harder once you’re managing more than one school.
Each school may have developed its own way of assigning training, keeping records or choosing providers. While that flexibility can work locally, it often makes it difficult for trust leaders to answer simple questions such as:
Are all schools completing the same mandatory training?
Which schools are behind?
Where are the gaps?
What evidence do we have if we’re asked for it?
Having a common approach doesn’t mean every school has to be identical. Individual schools will also have different priorities, but there should still be a consistent foundation that everyone works from.
This is where a central learning platform makes a real difference.
With iAM Academy, trust can assign common learning across all schools while still tailoring training to individual roles or locations as needed. Trust leaders can monitor completion across the organisation from a single dashboard, making it much easier to identify gaps and report with confidence.
Just as importantly, schools don’t need to juggle multiple providers to cover different subjects. iAM Academy gives schools access to more than 400 school-focused courses, covering everything from safeguarding, KCSIE and school safety to health and safety, sustainability, wellbeing, SEND and professional development. Courses are organised into dedicated collections, making it straightforward to build training pathways that reflect each school’s priorities while maintaining trust-wide consistency.
Ask anyone responsible for staff training what takes the most time, and the answer is rarely ‘assigning courses’. It’s the chasing afterwards.
Sending reminder emails, checking spreadsheets, following up with people when you bump into them in corridors, trying to remember exactly who still needs to complete refresher training before the deadline expires…
Those small jobs soon add up.
The easiest way to reduce that workload is to make expectations clear from the start and let the system handle as much of the admin as possible.
With iAM Academy, staff receive automatic notifications when training is assigned and reminders before deadlines. Outstanding learning is clearly displayed on each user’s dashboard, so staff can immediately see what still needs their attention without someone having to keep prompting them.
That means less time spent managing spreadsheets and inboxes, and less time wandering the halls and classrooms looking for stragglers. The result is more time to focus on what matters most.
Good record-keeping isn’t just about being ready for those formal DfE inspections.
Schools need confidence that staff have completed the required training, that refresher courses are completed on time, and that evidence can be produced quickly if requested.
At the very least, schools should be able to show:
who completed the training
when it was completed
whether it has an expiry or review date
any certificates or evidence of completion
Keeping that information in one place also makes internal reviews much easier. Instead of checking multiple folders or contacting different training providers, leaders can see an individual’s learning history in a matter of seconds.
iAM Academy automatically records course completions and stores certificates against each user’s profile, making them easy to search for, view, or download whenever they’re needed. Schools can also record externally completed training alongside iAM Academy courses, providing a single complete training record rather than separate systems for online and face-to-face learning.
Bringing together externally completed and online training gives schools a much clearer picture of where they stand.
Mandatory training has a reputation for being something people simply work through as quickly as possible. Tick, done.
The problem with that is that if people don’t remember what they’ve learned, completing the training is worthless, and you’ve wasted your time and money (and potentially put people at risk).
Making learning more engaging doesn’t mean making light of serious topics. It means presenting them in a way that’s easy to follow, digest, remember, and that's relevant to the situations that staff actually face.
That’s the approach taken across iAM Academy. Courses are built around realistic school scenarios, using animation, interactivity, and storytelling where they help explain a topic clearly.
Subjects that require a more serious tone, such as safeguarding, are treated differently and sensitively to ensure that the learning reflects the subject matter.
The aim isn’t simply to help staff tick that completion box. It’s to help them recognise situations they may encounter in school and feel more confident responding to them.
Training shouldn’t be something that’s organised once and forgotten about.
At a minimum, schools should review mandatory training regularly to ensure refresher courses are completed on time and that learning still reflects current guidance.
It’s also worth reviewing training whenever responsibilities change, new legislation is introduced, or an incident highlights the need for further learning.
Keeping on top of those changes can be difficult when schools are already managing dozens of other priorities.
iAM Academy’s course library is continually reviewed and updated as guidance changes, so schools don’t need to worry about whether they’re delivering out-of-date content.
New collections are also added as schools’ responsibilities evolve, helping leaders respond to emerging requirements without having to source new providers. This includes the KCSIE, Sustainability, and Incidents collections, which have been created to address specific new laws such as Benedict’s Law and DfE guidance.
If your training records are spread across spreadsheets, folders and different platforms, it’s tempting to think you need to rebuild everything all at once.
It’s usually better to start small.
Begin by identifying the training every member of staff needs, then organise any role-specific learning around that foundation. Bringing your records together in one place will often highlight gaps, duplicated effort and opportunities to automate routine tasks.
Once that structure is in place, managing training becomes much easier.
Whether you’re responsible for a single school or an entire trust, iAM Academy helps simplify the process. From assigning learning and building role-specific pathways to tracking completion, storing evidence and reporting across multiple schools, everything’s managed in one place.
Managing staff training will probably never be the smallest job on your list, but it doesn’t have to be one of the most time-consuming.
Having the right courses available is only part of the picture. Schools also need a straightforward way to assign learning, keep records up to date and understand where attention is needed.
With more than 400 school-focused courses, flexible learning pathways and built-in reporting, iAM Academy helps schools and trusts spend less time managing training and more time focusing on the people completing it.
Want to see how it works? Explore iAM Academy or book a demonstration to find out how you can assign, track and evidence staff training from one place.