Perdiswell is a two-form entry primary school situated close to Worcester city centre and serving a wide range of social catchment areas. There are currently 416 pupils on roll. I have been in post since September 2009, working with five senior leaders and developing a group of six "Future Leaders".
We have a well established and motivated teaching and administrative staff, but are very poorly funded due to being one of the "shire counties". Subject leadership gave staff many sleepless nights so something had to be done, and within a tight budget...
What does subject leadership mean? What am I going to be asked? How am I going to get the information I need? What needs to be in my file of evidence? Who knows what they are doing?
These are just some of the questions that staff had when I opened up a discussion on what they felt they needed in order to report on their subject. We were due an inspection and nerves were fraught to say the least. People needed to be given time and resources to put them at ease and find out more about the standards and pupil attitudes to their subject.
What does subject leadership mean?
Subject leadership is often defined in the title a person is given. We do not have subject coordinators, we have subject leaders! Coordination too often leads to being good at managing the subject budget and the feeling that was job done. We all know it is more than that in today's educational climate. I wanted staff to be given the freedom to express their expertise and realise their passion for their subject. It was my job to lead them towards answering the questions they had and feeling that they were having ownership and impact.
The rest of the questions
I looked down at the list of endless documents on my laptop that I had used over the last 20 years to monitor subjects. Book scrutiny, pupil questionnaires, assessment systems, lesson observation, learning walks, the list goes on. Why were we reinventing the wheel all the time? Would it not be better to have one document that would evaluate a subject, taking into account current priorities and flexible to our unique setting? I decided to draw upon my past experience so that subject leaders had a resource that would give them a starting point. The end result was the Perdiswell Primary School Subject Leader Guide.
Where to start?
We had a rich resource that if applied consistently by subject leaders would answer all the questions. We began by looking at the questions about our subject and seeing where we all were. Some examples from the Guide include:
- What are the pupil standards in your subject?
- How do you know?
- What are the strengths and areas for development in your subject?
- Are there any underachieving groups in your subject?
- How is staff confidence and subject knowledge within your subject?
- What does the curriculum look like?
A staff meeting established a collective approach to finding the answers, not just for your own subject but to help other people as well. The first task established our baseline, which was variable across subjects, with a common theme: teachers need time as the "day job" can be quite energy-sapping!
The aspect that gave our staff the most concern was being able to judge attainment and progress in their subject. We established that the current tick-sheet systems were of little use in terms of judging attainment with any honesty or true rigour, and that they were not necessarily informing future learning.
We adopted an Assessment Review system, with the Guide providing advice and process on this. Each subject leader started with either year 2 or year 6 and designed a task that could be assessed against level criteria from the national curriculum. The subject leader then spent a whole afternoon with a mixed ability group of six pupils explaining the task, observing and questioning the children to establish their standards. A member of the leadership team was also there to support the process and help form judgements.
This information was then used as a benchmark for others from that year group and gave evidence of standards at the end of each key stage. We have noticed that the more often this is done and with varying year groups that our evidence-base has grown considerably, having initially only had headline data for years 2 and 6.
A particular strength of this form of assessment, which is very similar to the early years approach, is that it provides you with a rich bank of information in a short period of time, informing future action plans.
Personally, I discovered that I had a few misconceptions, one of which was that ICT skills were outstanding at Perdiswell. When we carried out the Assessment Review it became obvious that children were highly skilled in using Microsoft Office, but that their independent research skills were limited to using the first site identified by the search engine. Subsequently, in the majority of cases our pupils were using Wikipedia to gather facts!
After feedback to staff, delivered by the ICT leader, this was built into teaching plans and subsequent evaluation shows a growing awareness among the pupils of how to research effectively.
The impact of this particular exercise was that staff knew the standards, strengths and areas of development for their subject and were able to talk about how they had established this information. Pupils were actively encouraged to talk about the subject, attitudes were established and I had headline data for the self-evaluation form. The cost of cover was a small price to pay to get such a clear and accurate picture.
Other activities within the Subject Leader Guide have allowed staff to gather the following information about their subject:
- A curriculum overview establishing coverage and depth.
- A self-review by staff of how confident they were in teaching each subject and training requirements that they needed to be more effective.
- An effective Action Plan that is targeted to specific aspects of pupils' learning.
- Book scrutiny that is focused on areas of the Subject Leader's choice.
- Examples of impact that the leader has made within: standards, pupil engagement, behaviour, spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, provision for vulnerable groups...
- Gifted and talented/more able provision.
- Pupil attitudes and pupils' targets.
- Resource requirements.
- Educational visits/specialist visitor provision across the school.
- The time they have spent on: teaching/learning, curriculum, assessment, promoting the subject, monitoring and resource ordering.
- Lesson observation outcomes, providing a framework for developmental observation.
- Monitoring schedule.
- A time-management tool to focus subject leaders on priorities and planning ahead, alleviating stress and encouraging work/life balance.
The philosophy
Rome was not built in a day and the philosophy of the Subject Leader Guide is that it takes time to monitor accurately and effectively. There are some quick exercises that provide data but we found that taking our time and going in-depth was far more revealing.
Teachers felt supported as they had a consistent framework to follow and the ownership to take things further, just as they would in a lesson that suddenly "took another direction". The comprehensive nature of the document means that it replaced other monitoring and was not another add-on for staff.
The design of the Guide is geared towards evaluation being centred on what is important for your unique school. It is not appropriate to simply print-off any of the proformas as each school is unique and has different priorities – I encouraged staff to access the Guide on our computer system and edit it before they carried out the exercise.
At the end of the Guide, I included an overview proforma for each area of the Ofsted evaluation schedule. This is designed for the subject leader to use all the gathered information to form succinct points that can be reported to the leadership team or any external inspectors. That way headteachers and senior leaders get the main headlines and do not have to sift through a plethora of paper.
The evidence sits with the subject leader and in our experience Ofsted did a quick check that we all knew the main areas for development and that what the subject leader said was echoed by the leadership team.
The Subject Leader Guide has made my own and my staff's lives easier. We are a self-evaluating school that manages our time more effectively and can see the wood for the trees. We have a real handle on what works best for our children and the areas that more teaching time can be used for in order to prepare our pupils for high school. Staff have shown enthusiasm and a real aptitude to solve these issues, as they have true ownership of their subject and are given the time to focus on the true priorities.
- John Tilley is headteacher of Perdiswell Primary School in Worcestershire. He is a Local Leader of Education who supports schools in Worcestershire and those allocated to the Bournville Teaching Alliance in Birmingham.