CPD for International School Teachers: What Counts, Where to Find It
CPD, continuing professional development, counts as any structured learning activity that produces evidence of what you learned and how it changed your practice. That includes online courses, live webinars, whole-staff training days, coaching, peer observation, conference attendance, and structured self-reflection tied to a real classroom change. What it doesn't include: passive reading with no reflection attached, or a certificate for something you never actually applied.
This guide covers what actually counts, how hours get tracked, and where to find CPD that produces real evidence rather than a stack of unused PDFs.
What counts as CPD
Formal courses and workshops. Anything with a defined structure, whether a one-hour online course or a multi-day workshop, counts if it produces a completion record.
Coaching and peer observation. Structured, reflective, and consistently rated among the highest-impact forms of professional learning in the research, even though no certificate is issued.
Conference attendance. Counts, though the evidence bar is higher here: a certificate of attendance alone rarely satisfies an accreditor. Pairing it with a short written reflection on what you'll apply strengthens it considerably.
Self-directed reading and reflection. Counts only when it's structured: a specific text, a specific takeaway, a specific change attempted afterward. Unstructured reading doesn't produce evidence and typically doesn't count toward accreditation-facing hours.
How CPD hours get tracked
There's no single global standard. Your specific school and accreditation body (CIS, WASC, MSA) set the actual requirement, and IB-specific roles have their own category system on top of that (see the IB comparison guide linked below for the difference between Category 1, 2, and 3 workshops). The most common failure point isn't a lack of CPD, it's a lack of tracking: teachers complete plenty of learning but can't produce a clean record of it when an appraisal or accreditation visit asks for one.
A simple log solves most of this: course or activity name, date, key takeaway, what you changed in your practice, and what happened as a result. If your platform builds this automatically, even better.
Where to find CPD that counts
A few starting points across different formats:
- An Introduction to Prompting for Educators, free, for practical AI literacy that's become one of the fastest-growing CPD requests from PD Coordinators this year.
- Safeguarding Terminology Explained!, free, a fast foundational refresher most schools expect annually regardless of role.
- Five Key Inquiry Strategies, free, short and IB-relevant.
- Intro to Allyship, Pro, for diversity, equity, and inclusion CPD, a category increasingly asked for by name in accreditation reviews.
FAQ
Does conference attendance count as CPD on its own? Attendance alone rarely satisfies an accreditor's evidence bar. Pairing it with a short written reflection on what you'll apply strengthens it considerably.
How many CPD hours do international school teachers need per year? There's no universal figure. It varies by school and by accreditation body, and IB-specific roles carry their own separate category requirements. Check your specific school's policy and your accreditor's current standard directly.
Does peer observation count as CPD even without a certificate? Yes. Structured peer observation and coaching are consistently rated among the highest-impact forms of professional learning, certificate or not, though it's worth logging the specific takeaway for your own records.