ABSTRACT
In many schools, planning has been substantially developed over recent years. The most notable achievements have been: a questioning of the way mathematics relates to the rest of
the school curriculum; a much clearer picture of the maths curriculum throughout
the school; more clearly delineated responsibility for content in each
teaching group; more consistent planning of maths lessons within the school; an improvement in the quality of investigations and problem
solving; an increase in practical work in response to the using and
applying PoS statements; a harmonising of marking policy and assessment and record-
keeping procedures throughout the school. This is an immense amount to achieve in a short space of time and has been achieved through careful planning. There is considerable variation between planning documents in different schools and this is evidence that there is no single right answer: planning must match the needs of the individual school and its pupils. One particular area of concern that teachers regularly report on courses is difficulty in the production of medium-term plans. Many teachers say that the methods they are using require them to write out the same information several times in different
Introduction formats: a practice that is inefficient and wasteful of their time. An important role of the coordinator can be to undertake the review of planning procedures and make suggestions that reduce the workload whilst still providing the information that is needed. Improving the efficiency of the planning process is not a trivial matter, however, and over the next few chapters we will be looking in detail at the planning process.
