Summer is the one time of year when textiles teachers can actually breathe — and it's the perfect window to invest in your own professional development. Whether you want to deepen your subject knowledge, refresh your schemes of work, or pick up a new practical skill, setting clear CPD goals now means you'll return to school in September feeling genuinely prepared and inspired.
Here are five CPD goals worth setting this summer, with practical steps to achieve each one.
1. Strengthen Your Pattern Drafting Skills
Pattern drafting is one of the most requested skills in textiles education — and one of the least confidently taught. If you've been relying on commercial patterns or avoiding the topic altogether, this summer is the ideal time to change that.
Start with the basics: a simple skirt block and a dartless bodice block. Once you understand the principles, you'll be able to teach them with confidence and adapt them for different student abilities.
Pattern Drafting: Simple Basic Blocks — Skirt, Dartless Bodice, Sleeve & Dartless Dress is a great place to start.
2. Refresh Your GCSE Planning and Assessment Approach
Exam board specifications evolve, and so should your schemes of work. Use the summer to audit your current GCSE planning — check it still aligns with the latest specification, that your assessment checkpoints are meaningful, and that your contextual study is up to date.
Our Planning, Assessment & Progression courses for both GCSE D&T Textiles and GCSE Art & Design Textiles give you a structured framework to do exactly this.
3. Explore a New Surface Textiles Technique
The best textiles teachers are also practising makers. Committing to learning one new surface technique this summer — whether that's bondaweb, discharge printing, or free machine embroidery — will directly enrich your teaching and give you fresh ideas for student projects.
Pick something your students often struggle with, or a technique you've always wanted to try. Our Surface Textiles Techniques (Online) course covers a wide range of approaches you can work through at your own pace.
4. Build Your Knowledge of Sustainability in Textiles
Sustainability is now embedded across most textiles specifications, and students are increasingly passionate about it. But many teachers feel underprepared to teach it with depth and confidence.
This summer, take time to explore the circular economy, slow fashion, and sustainable materials — and think about how to weave these themes meaningfully into your curriculum rather than treating them as a bolt-on topic.
Our Sustainability & Climate Change in Textiles Education course is designed specifically for teachers and is fully online and on-demand.
5. Develop Your Drawing for Textiles Practice
Strong drawing skills underpin great textiles work — but it's an area many teachers feel less confident modelling for students. Spending time this summer developing your own drawing for textiles practice will pay dividends in the classroom.
Work through observational drawing, textile artefact making, and experimental image making — the three pillars of a strong textiles design process.
Explore our Drawing for Textiles series — three progressive courses you can work through across the summer.
Make This Summer Count
CPD doesn't have to mean expensive conferences or long courses. The most impactful professional development is often the kind you do at your own pace, in your own space — building skills that directly improve your teaching.
Browse all online CPD courses for textiles teachers →