ABSTRACT
The first of the two main roles of the science subject leader is to lead a team that plans and carries out a teaching programme that engages pupils, achieves high standards and aligns with the National Curriculum for science. The second is to evaluate the curriculum and its impact on pupils (DCSF Standards website). But this has not always been the case, for the role has evolved. The science coordinator began life as the member of staff who dealt with the literature coming into the school relating to science, writing the school policy on science (Ritchie 1998), possibly identifying the materials needed, possibly attending courses in science teaching that could then be ‘cascaded’ to the rest of the school staff. The role changed and grew and then became science subject leader. As the title implies, this is not simply a ‘pulling together’ of information but taking a view about what science should be in the school, identifying ways in which it might need to change and then finding ways to make changes, taking staff on the journey. In recent years the role has changed further in some schools. As we mentioned in Chapter 23, planning requires consideration of a wide range of whole-school issues as well as those that fall more easily within a subject. One way to address this across a school is to have teams of staff responsible for a subject, a number of subjects or for specific themes (Burrows 2004), or, for example teachers with responsibility for a year group, or stage. One example of this approach is reported by Barr (2003) as described in Box 25.1.
