Having a curriculum area responsibility can be extremely rewarding when it’s going well and fantastic for professional development. However, for those new to a position, or those concerned about new initiatives, it can be worrying. You may ask yourself when you are presented with the unknown:

What are my key actions? How will I implement them in time? What if my curriculum area isn’t being taught correctly? How do I equip for an Ofsted Deep Dive? What do I present to governors? What do I analyse and do with all this past data? Will I ever reach my performance management targets when staff won’t implement initiatives?

The saying ‘knowledge is power’ is true in this context. It’s all too easy to have a handover from the previous leader of your new responsibility and hold onto their every word. They might have useful documents in their subject folder, but, they might not. The most important steps are to:

1) plan information,

2) create a checklist and

3) set deadlines.

None of this will happen overnight so ensure that you set yourself realistic targets.

Here at 2Simple, we want to support you in striving for excellence with your curriculum leadership, so we have just added another subject to our hugely popular Subject Leader Toolkits: The English Leader’s Toolkit.

This has a variety of tools and resources which are suitable for those new to the role and those with more experience. We have carefully considered a range of scenarios during the creation of these tools, such as users of the tools that might be part of an English Team, for example, Phonics or Reading Lead.

Take our Self-Evaluation tool for example. This 7-page document is a must for all English leaders or members of the team. It presents the reader with probing questions on all areas of responsibility which can be measured over the course of the year.

The Staff Surveys area provides detailed information-gathering tools to help users find out attitudes, approaches and generally what the staff do and do not know. As well as this, the Pupil and Parent Voice tools are invaluable for measuring pupil and parent attitudes.

All the toolkits can be accessed by Purple Mash subscribers here.

If you don’t have Purple Mash, there is no need to worry. We think our toolkits are so good, we want everyone to have one. Download your free copy here.