THE Government has chosen a select number of schools across the country to become training centres for teachers -- and a Bolton secondary is to be one of them.

Rivington and Blackrod High School will become the first training school in the borough in September. The school has been awarded £220,000 of extra Government cash so it can develop into the educational equivalent of a university hospital.

The school will be one of a group of training schools across the country that is dedicated to improving all schools through continuous professional development for staff and research into teaching and learning.

The 1,900 pupil strong school already has an impressive foundation in teacher training. It has 18-20 trainees in the building at any one time and has close links with Manchester University, Liverpool University and Edge Hill. There is a staff learning and research centre on campus and a comprehensive induction programme for all teaching and non teaching staff.

Over the next four years the school, which has 120 teaching staff and 60 support staff, will invest the extra cash in a number of innovative ways.

Assistant headteacher Jim Mitchell was a key figure in submitting the school's bid for training school status, and he is clear about why they wanted to be a training school -- to improve the education of the young people. "You've got to support the staff and you have got to have them motivated and help them deliver a better performance.

"If you have motivated staff coming in in the morning they are going to pass that on to the children in the lessons. This will lead to better results and better students."

At the heart of the bid is the belief that all members of staff should be given career-long support within a formal, properly organised and well funded scheme. The school believes that such support will create a professionalism and readiness to train, reflect, research, share and initiate.

Teachers will have a timetabled period for professional development -- which will include class observation, involvement in research projects and working with trainees. With the extra resources the school is to create a classroom observatory where groups of trainees and existing staff can observe good practice.

Observers will sit behind a mirror looking into a classroom, invisible to the class inside.

Some lessons will be recorded on DVD or video and the school intends to build up a lesson archive recording how experienced teacher handle different situations.

After a class observation there will be discussion and feedback.

As a training school, the school will further develop its already existing mentoring programme, so that eventually all staff would be entitled to regular mentor meetings. This would alert the school to problems staff members may face and enable them to work together to overcome them.

Developing leadership programmes for middle leaders -- such as heads of years or departments -- will be another feature.

Mr Mitchell said it is important middle leaders are supported as some heads of department have responsibility for perhaps a dozen staff.

Middle leaders will be given support on how to relate to and train more junior members of staff, how to resolve conflicts and coaching on leading a team on teaching the curriculum in their particular subject.

Each year they will run a programme for about 12 emergent leaders.

The school will have the chance to develop more opportunities to research the best ways children can learn. Mr Mitchell said children have different styles of learning.

According to Mr Mitchell, the best ways to educate children are constantly changing and evolving. For example what might be relevant 10 years ago may no longer be so.

An integral part of their role as a training school will be spreading and sharing good practice and ideas with as many as 50 partner schools in the local area. They would also take responsibility for training staff in other schools.

They will hold conferences and build on existing networks. They intend to use a variety of methods for information exchange such as websites, e-mail, a web archive of training materials, video and e-conferencing and visits.

A stringent evaluation of the training school activities will be carried out would involve staff, pupil and parental questionnaires, feedback sessions and also by looking at staff recruitment and retention levels in schools.