Subject Leadership
SUBJECT LEADER CORE PURPOSE
- Provide professional leadership, management, organisation and direction for the subject
- Secure high standards of teaching and learning in their subject
- Contribute to the development of school policy and practice
- Ensures that practices improve the quality of education provided, meet the needs and aspirations of all pupils, and raises standards of achievement in the school
- Support, guide and motivate teachers in their subject
- Evaluate the effectiveness of learning, the subject curriculum and progress towards targets for pupils and staff
- Identify needs and inform future priorities in the subject, in relation to the overall needs of the school
SUBJECT LEADER KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Strategic direction and development
- Within the context of the school’s aims and policies, subject leaders develop and implement subject policies, non- negotiables, plans, targets and practices, which reflect the school’s commitment to high achievement, effective teaching and learning. This will be written as Policy, the three I statement Intention, Implementation, Impact and needs to be updated if there is a development or change in the subject (at least annually). Also, the subject leader keeps an up-to-date Action Plan of their subject. This will be reported to staff, governors and SLT. These documents will be reviewed throughout the year during staff meetings, INSET days or subject leadership time. The action plan will be reviewed at least annually.
- Standards and Progress
- Subject leaders evaluate practice and develop an acceptance of accountability. They monitor the progress made in their subject, including adherence to the non-negotiables. They evaluate the effects on teaching and learning, and use this analysis to guide further improvement, using a variety of tools; such as book scrutiny, learning walks, planning sampling, teacher discussion, pupil interviews/ pupil voice, observations/ learning walks and data analysis. Once the standards have been monitored, the findings are acted upon by the subject leader; via the Action Plan and feedback given to HT, staff and governors, and any areas for development fed into the Subject Action Plan and acted upon.
- Subject Leaders will keep up to date about their subject by attending any training relevant to their subject, attending meetings with other subject leaders within Brighton and Hove, reading the OFSTED subject reviews and other information/guidance.
- Curriculum
Subject leaders:
- Develop, establish and ensure that Planning Progression Document and Unit Plans are understood by all those involved in putting the plans into practice, including staff who are new to the school.
- Check teacher’s plans to ensure that they are in line with school procedures and meet the needs of the pupils, providing appropriate differentiation, and level of challenge.
- Ensure that teachers are clear about the teaching objectives in lessons, understand the sequence of teaching and learning in the subject, and communicate such information to pupils.
- Ensure curriculum coverage fulfils the National Curriculum and there is continuity and progression in their subject for all pupils, including those in receipt of PP and those with special educational or linguistic needs.
- Use assessment and data effectively, where appropriate to identify pupils who are underachieving in the subject and, where necessary, create and implement effective plans of action to support those pupils.
- Assessment
Subject leaders will mainly use evidence from learning walks, book looks and pupil conferencing to assess the standards of their subject. This evidence will then be written up on the Monitoring Form and Action Plan.
A recording of children’s outcomes in the form of data will be based mainly on formative and the occasional summative assessments. The recording of data will give the Subject Lead a general trend of how their subject is performing across the school.
For English and Maths, this will be done at the end of each term and once a year for the foundation subjects. Most judgements will be based on the learning in the books, verbal feedback in lessons and occasional summative assessments which can include an analysis of a final piece of work, a performance or a test. These assessments must take into account careful consideration of the workload of teaching staff.
Based on the evidence mentioned above, subject leads will draw conclusions and take the necessary action to ensure high standards of their subject and detail ways forward in their Subject Action Plan.
- School Improvement
Subject Leaders:
- Create a climate which enables other staff to develop and maintain positive attitudes towards the subject and confidence in teaching it.
- Review the subject action plan annually.
- Are clear about actions to be taken, timescales and criteria for success and how these relate to the School Development Plan.
- Develop a cycle of monitoring, relevant to their Action Plan and School Development Plan, ensuring that they are able to make judgements about the standards within their subject.
- Keep evidence and summary of their monitoring.
- Act upon any findings which cause concern.
- Resources
Subject leaders:
- Ensure the effective and efficient management and organisation of learning resources, including information and communications technology to meet the objectives of the school and subject plans.
- Keep resources up-to-date and are relevant to the topics covered.
- Identify where new resources are required on an action plan and make a request, along with costings, to the HT, for consideration.
- Staff CPD
Subject Leaders:
- Audit training needs of staff regularly and lead professional development of staff by doing at least one staff meeting a year. English and Maths will do staff training at least once a term.
- Provide guidance on the choice of appropriate teaching and learning methods to meet the needs of the subject and of different pupils.
- Provide the support, challenge, information and development necessary to sustain motivation and secure improvement in teaching.
- Establish clear expectations and constructive working relationships among staff through teamwork and mutual support.
- Ensure that the HT, SLT and governors are well informed about subject policies, plans and priorities, the success in meeting objectives and targets, and subject-related professional development plans through an annual report to the curriculum committee.
- Monitoring & Accountability
- All subject leaders are entitled to non-contact time throughout the school year for the learning walks or lesson observations.
- Time to develop subjects will be devoted during staff meetings and recording of actions will be on Monitoring Forms and Action Plans. Monitoring forms and action plans will be shared with staff during staff meetings or via email.
- SLT will monitor subject leaders' effectiveness as part of the appraisal process.
- Subject Leader targets for the term will be communicated to all staff on the staff meeting agenda for the term and within the appraisal meetings.
Subject Leader responsibilities for the term
Subject leader focus for the Spring term 24 – Monitoring
Questions to be considered:
- Are there unit plans for every unit?
- Has the progression document been used to support the unit plans in terms of objectives, prior learning, vocabulary and assessment?
- Are lesson resources in line with the unit plans? Does each activity support children to meet the learning objective?
- Do the lesson resources reflect the agreed non-negotiables (if these are in place for your subject)
- Does learning in books reflect the unit plans?
- Does learning in books reflect the progression we expect to see across the school?
- Is there evidence of high-quality teaching in books and unit plans?
- Is there evidence in books of assessment milestones being met?
- How are the SEN/PP being supported to make expected progress?
- Pupil voice: focus on SEN/PP? Two or three questions.
