do training in the fewest, biggest chunks you can

At first, we had lots of short after-school training sessions.

Then we switched to a fewer, longer after-school sessions.

Then we switched to three after school sessions and a day.

Then we switched to two full days.

Then we switched to a training weekend with an overnight.

That’s when it got easy. The fewer times you have to get everyone together, the better the attendance, the less communication you have to do, and the more consistently everyone in each team gets the training they need. Motivation is higher too, because going away for a training weekend is fun whereas, with the best will in the world, filling in a route card after a full day in school is nobody’s favourite afternoon. 

The quality of the training improves dramatically too, because you can do everything practically rather than theoretically. Doing it for real is better than any classroom session.