Culture & Education | Saturday 14 January, 2017 2:48 am |

Pearson has announced the launch of a new service in the Middle East designed to improve the quality of education and training received by the region’s teachers.

The Pearson Teacher Professional Development Service has been officially available throughout the Middle East since October 1st, 2016. The launch will allow schools, training centres and government departments to have access to teacher professional development content, as well as having their delivery of this content quality assured.

A centre undertaking the Pearson Assured Teacher Professional Development Service will:

• Undergo a quality assurance process.
• Have centre trainers undertake a Pearson Master Teacher Trainer Course.
• Access licensed teacher training content from the international Pearson catalogue of courses.
• Have access to Pearson Assured course certificates.

This Service has been designed to ensure that centres offering professional development programmes for educators comply with international standards of best practice, and that the programmes undertaken by educators are rigorously reviewed and verified by independent experts. Centres who have undergone the Service will be assessed by Quality Advisors annually, reviewing the validity and reliability of the centre’s quality systems and providing guidance on how they can be improved. This focus on quality extends to ensuring that the institution’s delivery of the Pearson course materials is interactive and engaging, and that delivery methodology meets stringent standards.

Pearson has launched the Service in the Middle East as education agencies across the region seek to improve teacher effectiveness and teacher standards at all levels as a way of raising overall education standards and improving learner outcomes.

Amanda Collins, Pearson’s Director of School Services in the Middle East says: “Research shows that one of the most important factors in improving student performance is effective teaching. Having teachers undergo regular, high quality professional development is essential to ensuring students are given their best chance of realising their potential. By making the Pearson Assured Professional Development Service available to centres offering these professional development programmes, we are giving more teachers in this region the opportunity to receive world-class training. I am confident that this will have a positive impact on those teachers’ students, and contribute to the overall improvement of school standards”. With the introduction of teacher standards and licensing in countries across the region it is more important than ever that the professional development provided to teachers is of the highest quality”.

Pearson Assured currently works with more than 5,400 education institutions worldwide, as well as a number of public service agencies, professional bodies and corporations offering in-house training, including British Telecom (BT) and McDonalds.