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The article discusses the key benefits and advantages offered by the setting up of a learning platform for each and every school in the UK. The government has asked every school to have integrated learning and management systems in place by 2010 as well as train teachers on the use of the same.

Three secondary schools, namely Varndean, Dorothy Stringer and Patcham, in Brighton, are offering a combined high quality induction program for trainee teachers who begin their placement with a series of workshops held across the three schools. The aim was to share resources and design programs of induction for trainees on Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and the graduate teacher program when they came on work placements from Sussex and Brighton universities.

The requirements and salient features of a continuing professional development (CPD) manager for teachers in a school are presented. The imaginative and interesting manner in which a CPD manager can guide colleagues through an ongoing process to improve their teaching and enhance pupils' learning is discussed.

Article considers the annual league table of teacher trainers produced by professor Alan Smithers and which has been branded meaningless and pseudo-scientific by academics. It is argued that figures in the table conflate figures and provide no value as a consumer guide to the best teacher training coruses available.

The Wavell school in Farnborough, UK, became a graduate teacher training school out of desperation, according to its head, who explains that teacher retention was a major problem. The trainee teachers make a strong contribution to fill the timetable and some of them stay on.

A report published by the Holmes Group, a group of 89 deans from university-based schools of education, has recommended the 250 teacher training institutions in the US to either drastically improve their standards or close down. Proposals for improving standards of teacher training include plans for enhanced coaching of teachers to make them sensitive to ethnic diversity and a five-year teacher's degree consisting of four years of art training and one year of in-house exposure in schools.

The new Teacher Training Agency (TTA) in the UK will seek to educate parents and school governors on the benefits of increasing the intake of postgraduate teachers in training. TTA will endeavor to provide effective guidance on school-based teacher training and financial grants for this purpose.