Frequently asked questions

Setting The Standard is an internationally accredited online professional development (CPD) course for teachers from Elm Education. It has 9 sessions and 27 masterclass videos — over 15 hours of training — with a reflection check after each part and a completion certificate. It's available in both English and Arabic.

The nine sessions are: Positive Behaviour Management; How We Learn; Learning Objectives, Success Criteria & Planning; Planning the Learning Experience; Effective Learning Strategies; Individual, Group & Collaborative Learning; Effective Use of ICT; Assessing Learning; and Feedback. Together they cover the full arc of a lesson — from the climate for learning, through how learning actually happens, to planning, teaching, assessing and giving feedback.

Every teacher, at any stage of their career and in any phase of schooling. It works as an induction programme for early-career teachers, as structured CPD for experienced staff, and as a shared language of great teaching when a whole school takes it together — which is where it has the biggest impact.

There are over 15 hours of masterclass video across 27 videos, plus reflection time after each part. It's self-paced, so most schools spread it across a term or a school year — typically one session at a time, in line with their CPD calendar.

Yes. Setting The Standard is accredited by The CPD Standards Office, the independent international body that assesses the quality of continuing professional development. Every teacher who completes the course earns a certificate of completion.

Yes. Setting The Standard is fully bilingual — the whole programme is available in both English and Arabic, leading to the same single certificate. That makes it practical for bilingual schools where some staff prefer to train in Arabic and others in English.

After each part of the course, teachers complete a reflection check on what they've just learned. They're marked to 100%, so a teacher finishes a session having demonstrated their understanding — not just having watched a video.

It's a set of activities, examples and guides that take the ideas from each session into real lessons. Instead of the course ending when the video does, teachers build a record of how they've applied what they learned in their own classroom.

The core programme is self-paced video, so teachers can fit it around teaching. The Tier 3 (Ultimate) whole-school licence adds 9 one-hour live interactive webinars to reinforce the skills and share best practice across your staff.

Tier 2 (Advanced, £7,495) gives whole-school access, the teacher portfolio of evidence for every teacher, leadership user guides, and set-up support. Tier 3 (Ultimate, £9,995) adds the full resource suite — lesson-observation templates, leadership guides and teaching & learning resources — plus the 9 live webinars and ongoing administrative support to plan and deliver the course. See full pricing →

£395 per year for an individual teacher. Whole-school licences are £7,495 for Tier 2 (Advanced) and £9,995 for Tier 3 (Ultimate), which adds live webinar training and leadership resources. Tailored packages are available for school groups and governments. See full pricing →

Learnalyze is an AI platform that turns lesson videos into evidence. It analyses each lesson across six dimensions of teaching excellence and gives teachers personalised, actionable feedback and coaching, plus objective whole-school data for leaders.

A teacher records a lesson and uploads the video. Learnalyze analyses what happens in that lesson against your inspection framework, then produces a breakdown across six dimensions of teaching, with specific moments from the lesson as evidence. The teacher receives personalised coaching and an action plan, and leaders see the picture across the school on a dashboard. See how it works →

Lesson Structure, Behaviour Management, Clarity, Formative Assessment, Engagement, and Adaptive Teaching. Every lesson is analysed against all six, so teachers can see their strengths as well as the one or two areas that would make the biggest difference next.

AI can't replace a leader's professional judgement, and it isn't meant to. What it can do is watch every minute of a recorded lesson, apply the same framework every time, and point to specific evidence for what it reports. That gives teachers far more feedback than a twenty-minute drop-in once a term can, and gives leaders a consistent baseline to work from.

No — it takes the routine evidence-gathering off their plate. Leaders spend less time writing up what happened in a lesson and more time on the coaching conversation that follows, informed by analysis of a full lesson rather than a snapshot.

That's one of its main advantages. Human observers, however skilled, vary — between each other and between a Monday morning and a Friday afternoon. Learnalyze applies the same framework to every lesson in the same way, so when you compare two teachers or track one teacher over a year, you're comparing like with like.

Yes. Learnalyze evaluates every lesson against your own national inspection standards, wherever you are in the world — giving principals and executive leaders objective evidence for self-evaluation and school improvement.

Yes. Learnalyze analyses lessons in any language, including Arabic. It can also translate the analysis itself into any language — so an English-speaking principal can read the analysis of an Arabic-medium lesson and understand exactly what was taught, where the strengths were, and what that teacher should work on next.

For bilingual and international schools this matters: it means one consistent standard of teaching across every classroom, whatever language the lesson is taught in, and leaders who can support every teacher on their staff rather than only the ones who share their language.

Lesson videos are stored on Supabase servers in the EU.

Access is deliberately tight. A teacher can always see their own lessons, and so can the staff in their direct line management. Teachers cannot see each other's videos — unless a teacher chooses to share one.

That sharing option exists for a reason: watching a colleague teach a genuinely excellent lesson is one of the most powerful forms of professional development there is. So the door is open for peer collaboration — but it is always the teacher's decision to open it, never something done to them.

A whole-school view: how teaching quality looks across departments and year groups, where the shared strengths and gaps are, and how that picture moves over time. For school groups and ministries, the same data rolls up across every school — so improvement can be tracked from a single classroom to a whole system.

Yes — you can get two full lesson analyses free, with no card required, by signing up at learnalyze.net.

Learnalyze pricing lives on its own site — see learnalyze.net. If you're considering it alongside Setting The Standard, get in touch and we'll put together a combined package.

Setting The Standard builds the shared knowledge and skills of great teaching across your staff. Learnalyze then measures what actually changes in lessons and coaches each teacher individually. Create the change first, then let the data prove it. See how they fit together →

Most schools take both from the start, and it's what we'd recommend. Setting The Standard gives every teacher the same evidence-informed picture of what great teaching looks like, while Learnalyze shows what's actually happening in lessons — so you can see the training taking hold in real classrooms rather than hoping that it has.

Once that standard is set and shared across your staff, most schools renew with Learnalyze alone. That's the programme working exactly as intended: the knowledge is embedded, and what you need from then on is to keep it alive — coaching every teacher lesson by lesson, and giving leaders the evidence that the standard is holding, year after year.

No. They're separate products and each works on its own — many schools use only one. They're simply designed to reinforce each other.

Send us a message telling us which option suits you — an individual place or a whole-school licence — and we'll get you set up. We reply personally, usually within one working day.

Within three working days of enrolling. Accounts are set up and your staff can begin — so you can plan a start date around your own CPD calendar and term dates, rather than waiting on us.

Setting The Standard gives immediate access to the course materials, and under UK consumer law that means the right to cancel ends once access begins — something you're asked to acknowledge when you enrol.

We do refund if you were invoiced incorrectly, invoiced twice for the same licence by mistake, or hit a technical problem that stops you accessing the course and we can't resolve it in reasonable time. We'll also consider genuinely exceptional circumstances. We don't normally refund because someone changed their mind after starting, or didn't find time to finish.

Email hello@elmeducation.org within 14 days of the invoice date and we'll respond within five working days. Read the full refund policy →

Yes. For small and large organisations alike we build a personalised package around your priorities, your frameworks and your rollout plan — often combining Setting The Standard and Learnalyze as one complete school-improvement solution. Tell us what you need →

Yes — Elm Education works with schools internationally, and everything we build is designed to be. The course is bilingual in English and Arabic, and Learnalyze evaluates lessons against your own country's inspection framework rather than a single national model.

Yes. The whole-school licences include leadership user guides and resources for planning and running the programme, and Tier 3 adds lesson-observation templates and ongoing administrative support. Learnalyze gives leaders the school-wide data behind it.

Elm Education was founded by Phil Lupton, a teacher, school leader and national education adviser with more than 25 years' experience across the UK and internationally. Read more about Elm Education →

Email hello@elmeducation.org or use the contact form below. We reply personally, usually within one working day.