Bridging programmes offer significant opportunities for students but they also are a novelty for staff, including teachers and administrators. The curriculum and course design section has already emphasised the need for them to be not only onboard from early on in the process of setting up the process but also the fact that specific needs may emerge: the skills required to properly run bridging courses may not exist locally if no such programme has ever been set up, or may need to be sharpened. In many contexts, participatory bridging programmes can be a unique opportunity to improve teaching, and in particular foster new relationships between teachers and students that are based on respect, role modelling, and discussion rather than hierarchy. This, however, requires an investment in teachers’ training. Similarly, the international nature of many bridging programmes provides unique opportunities for international exchange and upskilling based on the different parties’ interest. It is easy to forget the professional development of staff members, as our example in the box below highlight, yet it might prove a central element for the durability of bridging programmes.

Staff training in FFA Largely as a result of the significant disruption caused by Covid-19 in 2020, and the recognition that much of the content for FFA would need to be designed from scratch in order to be contextually relevant and engaging for the learners, the period directly preceding the initiation of the programme, and the 9 months over which it was run, were extremely frenetic, to say the least. The focus was on the smooth running of the programme, not least guaranteeing that there were materials ready and lessons planned for when students turned up each day at the learning centres, which resulted in some other programme commitments being deprioritised.  One of these was providing training to staff members, particularly at RLP, who wished, for example, to be given training in how they could deliver IELTS training themselves so that it did not always need to be ‘bought in’ by external professionals. This was clearly a professional development opportunity for them, which could have opened up opportunities both within and outside RLP for career progression. In the context of the second semester of FFA, however, it became challenging to schedule course meetings given people’s availability, let alone an intensive block of staff training. Every humanitarian programme, however, has its excuse for why often the goals that would contribute to long-term structural change end up not being possible, be it funding, time, capacity, etc. Ultimately these opportunities for professional development were not adequately budgeted for and the time was not ring fenced within the project timelines from the start, leading to it being perceived as a positive extra and not a core project deliverable. For future iterations of FFA, CPD opportunities will be included at the design and budgeting stage.