To make informed decisions about the upcoming PD scheduling options, we would like to make you aware of a few things before hand. Today, it's why we run PDs like we do.
1) Adopting an Ethic.
Professional Development Seminars can be boring and take time away from other things we'd rather be doing or should be doing. In recent years this makes our regions PD attendance quite low compared to Metro because we simply don't have the CRT population like Metro does. To make matters worse, the other regional CRT networks are places like Shepparton, Mildura and Bendigo. It's not like CRT's can pop across to the next suburb in 20 minutes to attend the PDs run by a neighbouring networks. We simply can't pick and choose like Metro CRTs can without a lot of travel time involved.
This makes it crucial that our PDs are not only quality education but that the presenters are animated and enjoyable and the atmosphere is social and as fun a possisble. We think that if you absolutely HAVE to take time away from something else, you'd better enjoy yourself while you are doing it!
We also want to try and make sure that no-one ends up in a position where they "absolutely have to" give up something important in their daily lives. This involves making sure that as many opportunities are presented as posisble in a variety of ways at a variety of times. We are here to support CRT's not to inconvenience them.
2) Why CRT attendance at Professional Development Seminars is getting more important.
Last month VIT changed the way in which it assesses how much Professional Development is required to maintain your registration. It has gone from a 5-yearly cycle to a yearly cycle. What was happpening under the 5 year cycle is that people would do no PD for 4 years and then cram the 100 hours in at the last minute. They have decided that this is undesirable.
What they did was split the 100 hours into yearly portions of 20 hours. The same amount is required as before but it is now necessary to approach it on a more regular and consistent basis.
What they are looking for is a variety of activities from reading (books, visiting blogs, nings and other online resources), teaching-oriented discussions with peers and Professional Development Seminars. 50% of this (10 hours) must be gained from an expert in a given field and/or staff members who are providing exposure to research and resources from outside of the immediate school environment.
A Professional Development Seminar's duration is generally accepted to be 5 hours for a full day. This is the actual face-time where the presenter is standing at the front of the room giving the seminar. This means that realisticly most CRTs are looking at attending at least one PD seminar per year. This means that it's vital that we are able to run a large enough number so that everyone can attend at least one without ruining their other plans. If we spend too much on each PD seminar the number will be few and this won't happen.
Keeping the number of seminars up is vital to our ethic of doing things in a way that makes sure the maximum number of CRT's get the support and education they need. It is now also profoundly important that we supply sufficient opportunities so that all CRT's can comfortably meet or exceed VIT requirements for registration.
3) How all this effects the way we have been spending Department allocated funds.
Points one and two mean that the choices of Presenter, Venue and Catering are EXTREMELY important for us.
What we intend to achieve is this: Any Professional Development Seminar we run is as close to "a social day out with friends" as possible. We don't want you coming just because you need to clock up some PD time for VIT and your registration. We want to generate an atmosphere where you knowing you will enjoy yourself and getting your required Professional Development are equally important.
This means that the Presenter needs to be animated and enjoyable, the venue needs to be plesant and comfortable, the food needs to be tasty and look inviting. This should help those attending to walk away like they have been a part of something good rather than just attended an educational class.
Where spending money is concerned, this means a lot. We don't want presenters that are just there to teach. We don't want drab and sterile venues. We don't want food that looks or tastes like leftovers. This means that the cheapest is rarely the best.
So far all PDs scheduled have been full-day on a Saturday and we understand that this doesn't really suit everyone but there's reasons we have done that up until now. To understand why we have done it this way up until now you need to be aware of the major disadvantage Regional networks have over Metro Melbourne groups.
When you book a PD the presenter has a standard fee for doing the seminar. On top of this you have to add travel and accomodation for the presenter. You have to remember that these people do this as a business and it has to be worth their while. Travel costs can be either a set fee per kilometer, a set fee per hour travel time or both depending on how they travel.
On top of this it's unreasonable to travel for 3 and a half hours, spend 6-8 hours on the PD and then take 3 and a half hours to drive home again. This means you also have to supply them with accommodation and meals for up to 2 nights depending on the presenter.
These combined can make the price as high as $1500 above the cost of what it would be for Metro to put on the same PD. While the Victorian Department of Education has guaranteed us that travel costs won't result in funding being rejected for a PD, each network only gets a certain amount of money. This all adds up fast realisticly resulting in us being able to run fewer PDs than a Metro CRT Support Network can if we try to run them to the same format.
We get around this by spending less money on things like the venue and catering and doing the serving, cleaning and other similar activities ourselves.
Wodonga South Primary School supplies us with a venue at very low cost, complete with access to an interactive whiteboard, to help support local CRTs. They also give us access to a meal room with a wonderfully social atmosphere and everything else that would normally go along with hiring a venue anywhere else. Because it is not a conference venue, this also leaves us open to source the catering from anywhere which allows us complete control over where we get the food from and the menu. This allows us to "shop around" and get quality food at the best possible price.
What this allows us to do is essential to us getting the highest number of PDs possible. Putting the above together, the big problem with running PDs at any other time than weekends becomes clear. We have to pay for a venue and use the venue's catering. For a PD with 23 places + 1 presenter and 1 organiser it will cost an average of about $1400 dollars for the venue and catering.
As you can see, we are "trading off" the $1400 venue cost against the $1500 travel and accomodation cost to keep us on par with Metro in regards to the number PDs we have and their quality.
This has not been an easy thing to accomplish but we are proud that we are now in a position to keep the standard and volume of PD Seminars high for local CRTs.
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