Starting the Year Already Depleted: Why September INSET Should Build Staff Capacity, Not Just Deliver Information

Every September, staff file into the hall for the first INSET day of the year with a coffee going cold in one hand and a folder of slides waiting on the screen. Six to eight weeks off should have left them rested. Most of the time, it hasn't completely. What tends to happen instead is a term's worth of anticipation already sitting in the room before a single lesson has been taught.

I have delivered INSET days for eighteen years, in various forms and for various schools, and sat through plenty more as a member of staff myself. The ones that stayed with people, the ones staff mentioned again months later, were never the ones built around imparting information. They were the sessions that assumed every school and every team in the room was different, that made space for people to think rather than simply receive, and that treated the day as an investment in capacity rather than a box to tick before term began properly.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. An INSET day built around policy updates and information delivery might tick a compliance box, but it does very little for a staffroom that is already running on reserves before the pupils have even arrived.

Why Building Staff Capacity Matters More Than Delivering Information

The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance on effective professional development has long pointed to a similar conclusion: development that is sustained and built around genuine collaboration changes practice, while one-off, passively delivered sessions rarely do. A 2026 study published in the British Educational Research Journal, led by researcher Ainsworth and colleagues, looked specifically at what promotes teacher resilience at school level, and found that strategies mapping onto autonomy, competence, and connection with colleagues were the ones that actually protected staff from burnout, rather than generic wellbeing messaging layered on top of an unchanged workload.

That lines up closely with what positive psychology would predict, and with what I have seen in the room. Staff do not build capacity by being told to look after themselves. They build it when they are given genuine ownership over a problem, when they get to use and recognise their own strengths and each other's, and when the culture around them makes it safe to be honest about what is and isn't working.

Recent workforce research from the National Foundation for Educational Research reinforces why this matters for schools specifically. Analysis by Worth and colleagues, published in 2026 and drawing on the Department for Education's Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders surveys, found that strong leadership and genuine support were among the clearest predictors of whether staff stayed or left. With well over a hundred thousand teachers having left the profession outside of retirement in the past three years, the case for INSET that actually builds people up, rather than simply informs them, is not a soft one. It's a retention one.

What This Looks Like in Practice

The best capacity-building sessions I have run share a few things in common, and none of them are complicated.

Sessions on personal strengths, and on learning each other's strengths as a team, consistently land well. There is something quietly powerful about a staffroom discovering that the colleague who always seems calm under pressure has a strength for it, rather than simply coping, or that the person who asks the most questions in meetings is bringing a strength for analysis that the team has been relying on without naming it. Naming strengths gives people language for what they already contribute, and that language tends to outlast the training day itself.

Sessions on having difficult conversations, and de-escalating them, whether with colleagues or with parents, tend to be some of the most requested. Staff are rarely taught this explicitly, and yet it sits underneath almost every pastoral interaction they have.

Sessions built around coaching conversations, rather than answers, are ones I have seen genuinely shift a team's capacity over time. When staff are supported to develop their own thinking rather than defaulting to a more senior colleague for the answer, it frees up time and energy across the whole team, and builds independence that compounds well beyond the INSET day itself.

And the sessions focused purely on staff wellbeing, particularly the ones I've run just before the Christmas break, tend to matter most when they include real space to reflect, talk, and rest, alongside small, practical strategies that make a genuine difference to day-to-day resilience and enjoyment at work. Not performative wellbeing. Practical wellbeing.

The Coffee Time That Changed a Staffroom

One session I remember clearly began with an honest conversation about time. A handful of staff at one school liked to chat informally before the day started, which meant others felt they couldn't get their own preparation done until after school instead, pushing their day later than they wanted or leading to increased work at home. Nobody had said this out loud before.

Once it was named, the solution was simple. The school introduced a shared coffee time once a week, protected and informal, where people could properly catch up. Alongside it, they set aside specific windows before and after school for focused, quiet work, so staff who needed to finish and leave could do exactly that.

Nothing about that change required new funding or a policy rewrite. It required staff being given the space and the permission to be honest about what was actually costing them time, and a structure that responded to what they said. That is what building capacity looks like in practice. It rarely looks dramatic. It looks like small, honest adjustments that staff themselves helped design.

Psychological Safety Is the Foundation, Not an Add-On

None of this works without a baseline of psychological safety in the room. Staff will not tell you honestly that a colleague's morning chat is costing them an extra hour after school unless they trust that saying so will be heard constructively rather than held against anyone. Building that kind of openness is slow work, and it is exactly the kind of work a positive psychology approach, distinct from a purely clinical or purely administrative one, is built to support.

This is also where the distinction between coaching and information delivery becomes practical rather than semantic. A coach working with a staff team is not there to tell them what the right answer is. We are there to help a team surface what is genuinely true for them, and to build their own capacity to solve it, which is precisely why the effect tends to outlast the day itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes INSET days actually effective for staff wellbeing, rather than just a tick-box exercise?

The evidence consistently points to sessions that are collaborative, sustained rather than one-off, and built around genuine ownership, as opposed to sessions that simply deliver information or policy updates. Staff need space to think and problem-solve together, not just to receive.

How is coaching different from staff training or traditional CPD?

Traditional training tends to deliver information or a specific skill. Coaching works differently. It supports staff to develop their own thinking, build confidence in their own judgement, and take ownership of problems, rather than relying on someone more senior for the answer every time.

Can an INSET day focus on staff wellbeing without losing academic or pastoral focus?

Yes, and in our experience the two are rarely in tension. Staff who feel genuinely supported, and who have language for their own strengths and resilience, tend to bring more capacity to their pastoral and academic work, not less.

How can school leaders measure whether an INSET day has actually built capacity?

Look for changes that outlast the day itself: shifts in how staff talk to each other, small structural changes like the shared coffee time example, fewer staff defaulting to others for answers, and, over time, in retention and staff survey data.

What is positive psychology coaching, and how does it differ from staff counselling or therapy?

Positive psychology coaching is forward-focused and strengths-based. It is not a clinical or therapeutic intervention, and it does not replace counselling or safeguarding provision. It works alongside these, focusing on building capability, resilience, and confidence rather than treating a diagnosed difficulty.

A Different Kind of September

If your September INSET day is currently built around information, it may be worth asking what it would look like built around capacity instead. We work with schools to design INSET and ongoing staff coaching that starts from exactly this place, grounded in positive psychology, tailored to what your team is actually carrying, not a generic template.

If you would like to talk through what that could look like for your school this year, we offer a free 20-minute discovery call at keystonecoaching.co.uk. No pressure, just a conversation about where your staff team is starting from this September.