Staff INSET & student workshops

Award-winning CPD, from the people who wrote the books

Martin Griffin and Steve Oakes wrote The A Level Mindset and The GCSE Mindset. Martin delivers the staff training himself — in your school, online, or at 11pm if that’s when your INSET runs.

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Best CPD

Winner, Teach Secondary Awards

Shortlisted, 2026

Outstanding Training and Career Development, BESA Awards

Delivered worldwide

Schools across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia

Who delivers it

The same two people, every time

No associate network, no delivery partner you have never met. Martin runs the staff training and Tony runs the student sessions.

Martin Griffin

Staff INSET and CPD

Co-author of The A Level Mindset and The GCSE Mindset, and co-founder of VESPA. Martin has spent his career on what makes sixth form students succeed, and delivers every staff session himself.

Tony Dennis

Student keynotes and workshops

Co-founder of VESPA Academy and a former teacher. Tony runs the student sessions and the feedback sessions where leaders work through what their questionnaire data is actually telling them.

What schools say

“The best professional learning they had undertaken”

Staff feedback on Martin’s training was exceptional, with many describing it as the best and most practical professional learning they had undertaken.

Rachel FraserCareers Adviser, Coffs Harbour Senior College, Australia

Staff INSET

Full CPD sessions, delivered in person

Substantial professional development of two to three hours, led face to face by Martin. Not a twilight overview and not a slide deck sent over — staff work through the materials themselves, debate real student cases in groups, and leave with a structure their department can actually run.

Introduction to VESPA

2–3 hours

A grounding in the non-cognitive behaviours associated with academic performance, working through two activities for each element of the model — ten altogether, enough to form a complete introductory curriculum. Staff experience the materials as their students would, then plan how a year of pastoral support might be structured around them.

Ten practical activities across all five elements
Staff experience the activities, not slides about them
Departments leave with a year-long pastoral structure mapped

Effective Coaching

2–3 hours

How to move from brief, well-meaning conversations to a coaching model that changes something. A three-part structure for the conversation, a hundred coaching questions, and transcripts and video of real young people describing their study problems — which staff work through in groups, deciding how they would intervene.

A three-part model for structured conversations
100+ coaching questions to take away
Real student cases, worked through in groups

Building Independent Learning

2–3 hours

What proactive independent study actually looks like at GCSE and A Level, and how to align staff expectations around it. Practical strategies for raising problem-solving so students stop waiting to be told what to do, set against what independence looks like at university and in work.

Define shared expectations across a department or year team
Strategies that reduce learned helplessness
Grounded in university and workplace expectations

Bespoke

Flexible

Every school arrives with a different problem. Tell us yours and we will build the session around it — whether that is a leadership briefing, a follow-up six months into implementation, or a programme running across an academic year.

Needs analysis before we design anything
Built around your data, not a generic cohort
Multi-session and year-long programmes available

Student keynotes & workshops

Sessions students actually remember

Unmotivated, unfocused, or simply never taught how to study? These are research-led sessions built to change what students do next week, not to fill an assembly slot.

Assembly or workshop

Developing a VESPA Mindset

Key Stages 3–5 · 45–60 minutes

An introduction to the framework built to get students thinking about their own learning behaviours rather than listening to someone describe them. Works at whole-year-group scale.

Tailored workshop

Revision & Study Skills

Exam year groups · 90–120 minutes

Evidence-based study techniques that change how students prepare: setting up an environment, forming habits, and choosing high-utility strategies over the comfortable ones. Students leave with take-home resources.

Specialist session

Preparing for University

Years 12–13 · 2 hours

Led by an experienced university lecturer, covering what actually changes at undergraduate level and the skills students need before they get there.

These are our standard sessions. If your students need something else, tell us — most of what we deliver started as a bespoke request.

Delivery and cost

Four ways to run it

Cost depends on format, duration and group size — but here is roughly where schools land, so you can check it against your CPD budget before you get in touch.

Online webinar

90 minutes

Interactive, Q&A included, recording available afterwards

from £350

Remote workshop

3–4 hours

Breakout sessions, digital resources and follow-up support

from £700 Dependent on time

On-site training

Half or full day

Face-to-face, hands-on activities, immediate feedback

from £850 Travel / accommodation charged separately

Bespoke programme

Across the year

Multiple sessions, tailored content and impact measurement

Quote on request

All figures exclude VAT and travel where applicable. Training can be booked on its own — you do not need a VESPA Academy subscription.

Case study

Seven sixth forms, one shared language

E-ACT · Academy trust

Training a trust, not a school

E-ACT wanted one evidence-informed approach to learning behaviours across seven sixth forms — a shared framework and language that still let each academy respond to its own context. Alongside the portal, Tony and Martin ran staff CPD and INSET days, delivered student workshops, and returned after each questionnaire cycle to help leaders read their reports and turn the findings into practical next steps.

7sixth forms

3cycles a year, with feedback sessions after each

Bothstaff CPD and student workshops

The CPD has helped staff develop greater confidence in supporting students with independent study and learning behaviours. It has also created greater consistency across our sixth forms in how staff talk to students about study habits, motivation and preparation for assessments. Amy Gill Trust Director of Sixth Form, E-ACT

Trust procurement

Buy through Everything ICT

VESPA Academy is an Everything ICT accepted supplier. Multi-academy trusts and schools can purchase portal licences, training and related services through the framework — without running a separate tender.

Procurement & security details →

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What happens next: we read it properly, come back within two working days with a proposal and a price, and suggest a call if it would help. No automated sequence.