If you were thinking this swanky site was just built to hold a selection of dis-connected blogs, you’d only be 90% correct. There are a couple of things of actual use too.
One of those things is a Maths Department Handbook that I put together. When I was Head of Department I was lucky enough to have no staff turnover. This meant that building something over time was easier to do. Trying to do this in the current climate, without a handbook, I think would be nearly impossible.
With the current rates of turnover, leading training one day means there is no guarantee of that idea or initiative still being in place a year later unless it is captured somewhere. This is where a handbook comes in.
Unfortunately they are incredibly time consuming to produce. Certainly in the first instance. Adding things afterwards, less so, but the initial investment to make one often involves time that people just don’t have.
When I started as a HoD, the department had a progress score of 0. This was increasing each year by about 0.4. I left in the year of the TAGs but in the first validated set of results, 4 years after I started, the department managed a score of +1.77. I say this just to help lend an air of credibility to the document and its contents.
I’m no longer a HoD but I recently had the time and created a handbook. I tried to capture lots of the things we did and lots of the things I wish we’d have done in my old department. I want to provide you with an editable version to either read or to use as a basis for your own. I hope there are some ideas in there that might be new to you and that you learn something from but most of all I hope it saves you some time.
It is the first link the “Documents” part of this site which you can either get to by clicking the link or through navigated the site yourself.
Here are a couple of snippets from the handbook so you get a sense of what’s inside.
Hope it helps!
I’m always interested in what people make of this so please feel free to comment with thoughts, questions or incomplete musings. Follow this or my Twitter account Teach_Solutions for similar content in the future. Also, check out the rest of this site, there’s some good stuff knocking about the place.
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