Are You Responsible for Leading and AoLE?
Getting the role in perspective
So, you have been responsible for leading an area of learning and experiences? And you are not sure where to start. Don’t worry; at RLC, we support leaders at all levels and specialise in ‘creative pedagogy’. Creative pedagogy? What’s this, you ask? Well, this is the subject of another blog, back to AoLE Leadership. Recently, we have had more and more requests from schools for Insets on how to be an effective AoLE Leader. So, in our initial blogs, we will focus on this vital role. What is also apparent is that Estyn’s recommendations seem to be based on how influential AoLE leaders are and what good progress looks like across various AoLEs.
The first key question is why have an AoLE leader in the first place, and what should a good one be doing anyway? We explore this as part of our “Effectively Leading your AoLE programme. But here are our key points/ reasons for having AoLE Leaders, even if you as a school are structured and working as an AoLE team:
• More effective distributing leadership, ensuring one person is responsible for driving that AoLE.
• Ensuring that someone is effectively utilising the strengths of team members and making cross-curricular links with other AoLEs
• Establishing a collective responsibility so that everyone makes a difference.
• Have a leader responsible for driving the curriculum, standards and progress.
• Having some one who can be personally responsible for professionally developing staff
• Having someone who has an understanding of standards and ensuring individuals and groups of learners make progress
• Enriching the curriculum
• Sharing expertise (not always necessary)
• Having the enthusiasm to make learning rich and engaging and do all of the above.
This leads to the question, "What should a good AoLE leader do?” What are the key things that a good AoLE leader should be doing? This is not an extensive checklist, but it might help you reflect on how well you are doing in the role.
• Knowing how well children progress is relevant to their starting point in school.
• Evaluating all aspects of the AoLE
• From evaluation Action planning for future development
• Ensuring appropriate resources are in place to deliver a rich and challenging curriculum.
• Having oversight of curriculum coverage and ensuring the curriculum meets national requirements.
• Providing guidance and support to colleagues
• Leading professional development and professional dialogue both within schools and with other schools in the cluster
• Overseeing the effectiveness of the assessment
• Promoting the Area of Learning and Experience and taking a proactive stance with staff and pupils
• Monitoring the effectiveness of teaching and the impact on learning and progress
• You are making the best use of financial and human resources to impact progress.
Where you are with the above list can depend on various factors. For example, how far are you in your leadership role and what AoLE have you inherited? For example, LLC, Mathematics and IT have traditionally been seen as the “core subjects’ these may well have been critical aspects of development plans in the past and, therefore, have been given a lot of time and focus. If you are inheriting the Expressive Arts, although now technically one-sixth of the curriculum, this area may not have been the focus of rigorous monitoring and evaluation. There, you are further behind your colleagues. Suppose this is the case, you don’t need to panic. At RLC, we are here to help.
We offer a range of face-to-face training, insets, and cluster work to help schools effectively lead their AoLE. For more information, follow the link.
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If you would like more information about Huw’s upcoming courses, programmes or availability for Inset, please follow this link or get in touch using the button below. If you liked this blog, we have several other helpful articles, which are constantly growing.
