Teachers in schools across England will benefit from Espresso Education’s increasing focus on professional development, as Espresso has teamed up with Teachers TV, the digital channel and web service for all those in the education workforce.

Teachers have less release time to attend training, while professional development requirements are becoming ever more rigorous.  This new partnership will assist busy teachers in over 10,000 Espresso subscribing schools to keep up-to-date with changing curriculum standards by providing them with some of the best Teachers TV videos and resources.

Teachers, assistant teachers, and head teachers alike can find the support they need with direct, relevant links from Espresso (in primary schools) and Clipbank (in secondary schools) to Teachers TV’s web-based content. 

Espresso’s newly re-designed ‘Staffroom’, its online teacher support area, will include ‘subject buttons’ taking teachers to particular pages within Teachers TV; a ‘Notice Board’ promoting Teachers TV weekly themes for each term; and a Teachers TV  ‘Search Box’. Espresso will also embed Teachers TV links within its content ‘modules’, collections of video and multi-media resources created around specific curriculum objectives. All these links, hand-selected by educationalists, will provide teachers with even further teaching and curriculum support on a subject or topic. These ‘just-in-time’ training opportunities from Teachers TV  allow teachers to prepare for what they may need in lessons the next day, right when they need it. 

Within Clipbank, teachers can review Teachers TV clips featuring the newly updated secondary curriculum. It also includes the Teachers TV ‘Search Box’ as well as Teachers TV secondary themes for the autumn term.

Through this partnership, Espresso is also planning to extend its popular pupil-focused ‘News Bites’ feature to inform teachers.  In November, ‘Teacher News Bites’ will be available on both Espresso and Clipbank, building on Teachers TV’s recently launched new-look news programme, first broadcast via TV and web on 19  September. ‘Teacher News Bites’ will be condensed versions of whole Teachers TV programmes and will include news of special interest to teachers as well as ‘feature’ stories. Delivered fortnightly, this news service will keep teachers updated on the latest educational news, trends, issues and debates.

Teachers TV aims to improve standards of teaching and learning, offering curriculum support and strategies to tackle key issues in schools today. Online, on-demand, anytime, Teachers TV has over 2400 programmes available on its website and broadcasts on digital satellite and digital cable TV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In March 2008, Education Digital 2 Limited, consortium made up by Brook Lapping/TenAlps PLC (75%) and ITN, was confirmed to retain the prestigious Department for Children, Schools and Families’ (DCSF) contract for digital TV channel Teachers TV for a further five years. This consortium offered more extensive reach through ITN’s business links with Espresso Education and Channel 4 Learning. 

Espresso for primary and Channel 4 Learning Clipbank for secondary are cross-curricular, digital libraries of high quality, video-rich teaching resources.

 Teachers TV
•Since the launch of Teachers TV over 2000 programmes have been commissioned. To date, the channel has filmed over 5,000 teachers in 2,000 schools. Over 1,900 educational experts, advisers and academics have been filmed.  
•The Teachers TV website has had 1.2 million visitors to date and has 109,000 registered users. Teachers TV now also has over 9,000 Associates registered on our website.
•Teachers TV broadcasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on digital satellite (Sky 880), digital cable (Virgin TV 240), and between 4pm and 6pm on Freeview (88).
•Teachers TV is the first channel in the UK to provide almost all of its programming content online, and currently over 2,000 programmes are available to download from www.teachers.tv   
•Teachers TV is one of the leading sources of CPD support for the education workforce, and is included in the TDA’s directory of CPD providers.
•www.teachers.tv was named the best educational website in the world this year at the Japan Prize 2007, where Teachers TV also won the UNICEF ‘Special Prize for the Year’s Best Programme on a Development Issue’ and was a runner-up in the ‘Minister of Foreign Affairs Prize for Adult Education’.