You are here:
Subject leader: role and responsibilities
Get to grips with the nature of the role and the responsibilities of a subject leader, so you can develop an effective model of middle leadership.
Contents
You're not required to have subject leaders in your school
It's up to you as a headteacher to decide if your school needs them and for which subject areas.
For example, if you're a small school, you might choose to have subject leaders for some subjects, such as English, maths and science, but not for others.
Example of subject leader duties
Below you'll find the main duties taken from our model job description for a subject leader. There are no specific statutory requirements for this role, so we've based it on the most common duties that other schools include.
The duties may look different in your school, depending on the context and the level of responsibility delegated to your middle leaders.
Strategic direction Promote the subject, its importance, and the value it brings across the school Have a good understanding of how well the subject is being
- Accounting officer: role and responsibilities
- Deputy vs assistant headteacher: role comparison
- Headteacher vs head of school: role comparison
- New headteachers: taking your first steps
- Role of a deputy headteacher (primary) Updated
- Role of an executive headteacher
- SENCO: role and responsibilities
- Strategic responsibilities of school leaders
More from The Key
Bitesize training with a big impact
Our on-demand training has your whole board covered and lets them learn at a time and pace that suits them.
Help your new governors hit the ground running with our expertly-designed induction training, and our role-specific courses support your link governors develop key skills and confidence in their role.
New eLearning: DSL refresher training
Your DSL’s training should be refreshed at least once every 2 years.
Designed in collaboration with safeguarding experts, our 2.5 hour online refresher training course reminds DSLs how to put their knowledge into practice, with in-depth, real-world scenarios.
- Need-to-know: DfE publishes new statutory guidance on the cost of school uniform 19 Nov 2021 08:51
- Need-to-know: STPCD 2021 published 4 Oct 2021 10:30
- In the news: Your weekly round-up for 20 to 27 August 2021 27 Aug 2021 08:00
- In the news: Your weekly round-up for 6 to 13 August 2021 13 Aug 2021 08:00
- In the news: Your weekly round-up for 30 July to 6 August 2021 6 Aug 2021 08:00
The Key has taken great care in publishing this article. However, some of the article's content and information may come from or link to third party sources whose quality, relevance, accuracy, completeness, currency and reliability we do not guarantee. Accordingly, we will not be held liable for any use of or reliance placed on this article's content or the links or downloads it provides. This article may contain information sourced from public sector bodies and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.