Beyond CPD: How Practice-Led Consultancy is Transforming Early Years Professional Development

Traditional professional development in early years settings often falls short when reduced to isolated training sessions, one-off inset days or online courses disconnected from daily realities. These approaches frequently fail to bridge the gap between theory and practice, leaving practitioners without the sustained support needed to implement meaningful, lasting change in their settings. Inspiration Nurseries and Forest School has pioneered an alternative model rooted in practice-led consultancy. Rather than treating professional development as separate from day-to-day work, this approach embeds learning within the lived experience of the setting. By ensuring training is contextualised and continuous, practitioners can develop their skills in ways that directly respond to the children and communities they serve, creating more sustainable improvements in early years provision and moving beyond tick-box CPD exercises.