Our project 'Professional Development of Staff within a European Dimension' is a key part of our school improvement plan as we work towards becoming an outstanding school. Our objectives are:To develop the expertise of our Senior Management Team to enhance their understanding of pedagogy and educational philosophies within a European dimension.To gain training and insight into how special educational needs are met in Europe and how our own practice could be improved.To improve and diversify our methods of teaching literacy by learning from a European context so that the learning styles of all pupils are met, to include visual literacy.To widen the experiences and training of our teaching assistants so that they can gain an understanding of teaching within Europe and how this can improve their own practice.To use the experience of seeing Forest Schools in action in a European country different from our own and to improve our own practice.In order to achieve our objectives we have selected attendance at structured training courses in Finland,Spain and Sweden where 10 learners will take part in this projects which will include the lead members of the school community for school management, Special Educational Needs, Literacy and staff training. Participants will also include Teaching Assistants and less experienced members of staff. By including participants from across the school community we will be able to disseminate widely within the school and have a positive impact on the whole school ethos.Activities will include pre-meetings to understand and prepare with course materials, pre- course liaison with other participants, administration support to book flights and plan journeys, planning work and cover for classes where adults will be absent, attending the course and completing the work within the course, feedback to colleagues in school and to the wider community. Pupils will be more informed about Europe. Their learning experiences will be enhanced and methods for new learning included in forward planning.We envisage that access to high quality learning for our school community will result in a more positive and outward looking approach to new ideas and methodologies in education. This will have a positive impact on our pupils, giving a wider European dimension to their education.Longer term, we hope that this European view will help our school to understand its place in Europe and prepare our pupils for a positive outlook to European culture. We also envisage that through our dissemination activities the wider community and networks of schools we work with will benefits as they learn about our experience and the key results of our participation in this projects.