A NUMBER of local primary schools in the South West Prince’s Teaching Institute (PTI) Hub have been awarded the ‘PTI Mark’ and are proudly displaying their banners.

Emma Kerr, principal at Egloskerry Primary School is the hub lead for the first ever South West PTI Primary Hub. Twenty-two schools are now part of the hub — including Calstock/Stoke Climsland, Altarnun, South Petherwin and Harrowbarrow — and are accessing affordable, local, relevant, high quality knowledge based Continuous Professional Development (CPD).

After attending a PTI CPD event in November 2018, Mrs Kerr realised that she needed to bring the high quality, rich and engaging nature of PTI CPD to the South West for primary schools. She said: “The East of Cornwall/West Devon is a geographically challenging region to access affordable, high quality, knowledge and pedagogically based CPD. Small schools have limited budgets to access CPD.”

Mrs Kerr began contacting schools to set up the hub in spring 2019. Interested schools planned their CPD days in the summer — these included Shakespeare, Cornish Rebellion, STEM and Geography fieldwork. The hub officially began in September 2019 and since then has grown further to include 22 schools.