Guest blog from Dr Steven Berryman, Director of Music at City of London School for Girls and Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. Also, Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.

As a musician, practice is part of daily life. Or I tell my pupils that it is. We practice to maintain our facility at our instrument (or voice), often using exercises to keep certain aspects in good health (such as sound production) because we want our instrumental/vocal skills to be ready when we need them.

Podcasts can contain a world of inspiring ideas, tips, and advice making them a great resources for teachers’ and school leaders’ continuing professional development.

Whether you listen to them on your commute to work, on your lunch break, or in the evening at home with a glass of something refreshing, you can guarantee you’ll walk away having learnt something.

Here are 8 podcasts from some of the world’s most renowned and highly regarded educators and educationalists that we recommend for teachers and school leaders:

Research released today from the Teacher Development Trust, produced by education data specialist SchoolDash, shows staff professional development budgets have fallen by 12% in secondary schools, and 7% in primary schools. The drop is the first since their analysis began in 2011 and suggests that tight budgets are forcing schools to reduce essential CPD support for teachers.

Staff training and CPD are key to raising student attainment and improving school's performance, as well as attracting, retaining and motivating teachers, yet, few schools (both primary and secondary) were able to spend more than 1% of their budgets on staff development in 2017. Of particular note is the news that 4.5% of primaries allocate no budget to CPD at all, along with 10.5% of secondaries.

Sharing practice and seeing others teach are great opportunities for teacher progression, yet the prospect of both can be scary.

Wood Farm Primary School have built confidence in sharing practice and collaboration has become an integral part of their teaching and learning, but how have they done it?

In 2015, Deputy Headteacher, Natasha Ashwin, shared her 4 top tips for embedding video-based CPD in your school that are still valid today:

Encouraging students to be independent learners, not only has huge benefits for them, but it's also a proven high impact, low cost way to improve progress.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) found that self-regulated, independent learning has a high impact on pupils’ progress for a very low cost. They learnt that the average impact of self-regulation over 8 months’ progress was found to cost under £80 per pupil per year.

Work-life balance is a sensitive subject, particularly in the education sector... so what do you make of author and peak performance expert, Dan Thurmon's quirky suggestion for how to get a better handle on your life?

Life balance, says Dan, is a concept that is intriguing, desirable and also completely unrealistic. It’s something we can never actually achieve, so desperately pursuing ‘balance’ can have a negative impact on our lives.