The training ends. The learning doesn’t.

By Nick Burnett , Director of Education and Innovation at PRICE Training.

Lyndsey Hayes wrote last year in TES about how a Community of Practice approach can transform teacher CPD by strengthening links to wider subject communities. It is a piece worth reading, and it pulled me back to a problem that sits well beyond education.

Most training ends the moment the workshop does. The slides get filed, the workbook gets shelved, and within a few weeks the new behaviours quietly give way to the old ones. That gap, between what people learn and what they actually do, is the single biggest missed opportunity in our sector.

Why this matters

Dr Philippa Hardman calls it scrap learning: the percentage of content learners say they will not apply on the job. A scrap learning rate of 40% or more is not unusual. That is wasted time, wasted budget, and, in our sector, wasted opportunity to support the people we exist to support.

The KASH framework helps explain why. Knowledge and Skills are largely trainable. Attitudes and Habits are not. They are developed through modelling, coaching, repetition, and culture. A one-off workshop, however well designed, rarely touches the bottom two.

Which is where Communities of Practice come in. Hayes’ argument lands in education, and it lands just as squarely in Children’s Services, Health, and Adult Services. Wherever practice is complex, relational, and shaped by judgement in the moment, the same logic holds.

What a Community of Practice actually is

Etienne Wenger’s original framing still holds up. A real CoP has three things, not one or two:

• Domain a shared area of practice people genuinely care about.
• Community regular, trusting relationships between practitioners.
• Practice real cases, real problems, real tools, used together.

Most things called a CoP have one of these. Some have two. Few have all three. A team meeting with a different agenda is not a CoP. A WhatsApp group is not a CoP. A mailing list is not a CoP. The difference matters, because only the real version closes the habits gap.

What the effective ones do differently

• They meet around live cases, not abstract topics. People bring something they are working on now.
• They use a light structure that protects time for reflection: what worked, what did not, what would I try next time.
• They sit alongside training, not instead of it. The workshop sets the language; the CoP builds the habits.
• They are facilitated, but not led. A good facilitator holds the space and asks the right questions, rather than positioning themselves as the expert.
• They have a clear domain. “Behaviour support” is too broad. “De-escalation in residential settings with young people who have experienced trauma” is something a group can actually get sharper at.

Practical implications for leaders

If you are commissioning training and not seeing the practice change you hoped for, the answer is rarely more training. A few things tend to make the difference:

• Start small. One group, one tight domain, six to eight people, monthly for an hour. Prove it works before you scale it.
• Invest in the facilitator. Skilled facilitation is the single biggest predictor of whether the group becomes a CoP or quietly fades.
• Protect the time. If it is the first thing dropped under pressure, you are signalling that practice development is optional.
• Measure what changes, not what was covered. Ask what people are doing differently three and six months in.
• Connect outwards. The best CoPs reach beyond a single setting. Cross-organisation groups, where it is safe to share what is not working, tend to develop the sharpest practice.

What we’re building at PRICE

This is not theoretical for us. Over the last few months we’ve been exploring how we might design a Community of Practice for the practitioners we train across Education and Schools, Children’s Services, Health, and Adult Services, with the plan for a small pilot cohort to launch shortly.

A few of the design decisions have been clarifying:

• Reflection-led, not course-led. The model we’re calling “Thumb and Thought”: short prompts that fit a practitioner’s working day, paired with a space to reflect on what it meant in their setting.
• Cross-sector by design. The four sectors we work across share more than they realise. The CoP is built to surface that, not silo it.
• Two-way learning. Practitioner reflections feed back into how we develop and refine our own training, so the community shapes the course as much as the course shapes the community.
• AI as a reflection partner, not a replacement. We’re piloting AI-assisted reflection prompts and scenario practice alongside the human community, not in place of it.

The settings making the most progress in behaviour support, de-escalation, and least restrictive practice tend to be the ones that have built something resembling a Community of Practice around their training. The course gives people the language and the tools. The community is where the habits actually form.

Where, in your setting, are the new behaviours actually being practised between training days?

If that question lands, and you’d like to find out more about the pilot, or be part of the first cohort, do get in touch with Nick Burnett .

Published 28 May 2026