Leadership and self-evaluation There are a variety of opportunities for staff to develop leadership skills in schools. Some staff lead improvement groups within school, at authority level or at national level. Others take on responsibilities such as becoming eco coordinators, primary/secondary liaison link, running a science club, or taking on responsibility for developing a unit of work. Often, learning programmes in the sciences in primary schools are well developed when one or more teachers have an enthusiasm and passion for the sciences and willingly take on responsibility for developing learning programmes. Often, but not exclusively, these teachers have a background in science or have a science qualification before entering the teaching profession. One other factor in determining the quality of sciences programmes in primary schools is whether the education authority has designated science as a priority on its improvement plan. Where this has been the case, schools had science development as a priority on their improvement plans and this often resulted in positive outcomes for children. In schools with a strong ethos of collegiate working staff often felt consulted and fully involved in decision-making. This involvement has resulted in greater ownership of developments. In such cases principal teachers and faculty heads felt that their views had been listened to and they were clear about curriculum rationale and plans. Unfortunately this has not always the case. For example, a few sciences staff are not fully aware of their school’s plans for their current S2 year group moving into the sciences at S3. In addition, a few senior managers, sciences faculty heads and principal teachers do not feel that they had been fully consulted or had their views taken on board when education authorities or schools have been deciding on curriculum plans. Almost all schools and departments visited for the purpose of this report, completed pro-formas indicating that they knew themselves well and that they could identify their strengths and areas for development. Many schools have comprehensive systems in place to manage their quality assurance programme. They use a variety of approaches to monitoring and evaluating the quality of their work including classroom visits, sampling learners’ work, cross-marking, and seeking stakeholders’ views. Some audit their work in the sciences using national documents, for example Science: A Portrait of current practice in Scottish Schools (2008) and How Good is our School? Part 3 (2007). For many schools and science departments, improving the consistency of high-quality learning and teaching remains a top priority. Overall, there is still work to do to share good practice effectively to help raise standards. Where science has been a priority in the school improvement plan, we often observe children who were engaged and enthused by stimulating learning programmes in the sciences. Too many improvement plans in pre-school centres, primary schools and special schools do not as yet contain any priorities for developing the sciences.
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