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How are the NPQs relevant to your context?

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Date published 02 October 2023

Last updated 25 July 2025

This article outlines how Ambition Institute’s National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) are tailored by our network of local delivery partners to support teachers and school leaders to develop with their context in mind.

Learn from diverse settings

No school, trust, local authority, or region is the same. Every context comes with its own specific priorities and challenges, and the obstacles you face in your setting may not be the same in another. For this reason, it’s important that your staff develop their skills and knowledge in a way that they can relate what they’ve learned to their setting and practice.

With Ambition’s National Professional Qualifications, your staff can learn from a diverse range of examples representing settings across the country, including those that are relevant to your phase or region. To ensure that our content is relevant we work with school and trust leaders from settings across the country to create video content and exemplification that reflects their day-to-day use of the knowledge and practices covered in our NPQ programmes. We think hard about where our examples come from: we include diverse settings by phase, specialism, location and size. We ensure that colleagues featured in our programme content reflect a variety of backgrounds and lived experiences.

Seeing the course content modelled in a context like their school or trust will help teachers and school leaders to apply their learning in their day-to-day role.

Ambition delivery partners

To increase access to high quality professional development and support school improvement, Ambition works with over 53 trusts and teaching school hubs across England to deliver our programmes. We call these organisations our delivery partners.

We work closely with our delivery partners to provide course content and materials, designed by our experienced team of experts and informed by a foundation of robust research. Our partners bring crucial local knowledge to the programme, placing emphasis on topics and approaches that match local needs.

These programmes are delivered by expert facilitators – known as visiting fellows – who are trained by Ambition. They deliver effective professional development and support your staff to keep getting better, drawing on their training and experience.

Additionally, when teachers and school leaders enrol in a programme run by one of our delivery partners, they join a close-knit community of teachers and school leaders. Working with a delivery partner creates opportunities for your staff to network with colleagues from schools in your region in online sessions and in-person conferences.

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The National Professional Qualifications

The National Professional Qualifications support teachers and school leaders to build the skills and knowledge to become more expert over time. Drawing on the very best research and evidence, they focus on what your staff need to know to build their expertise.

Our year-long specialist NPQ programmes help teachers and school leaders to develop their knowledge and skills in a specialist area. They are:

Our 18-month long leadership NPQ programmes give teachers and school leaders the opportunity to develop their leadership practice across a range of contexts. They are:

How do I sign up?

To apply for a National Professional Qualification, fill in the application form. You can register for yourself, your colleagues, or for your school or trust.

To see which partners are delivering programmes in your area, look at our delivery partner map.

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Interested in NPQs?

Our National Professional Qualifications are designed with the flexibility to fit around the responsibilities of your day-to-day role.

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