When I first came to teach in Norfolk as a second in department I was quickly faced with the prospect of having a teaching department of 3 rather than 5. One of our staff went on maternity leave and the other moved to another school at Christmas. They were unforseen departures but left the department in a very sticky situation. It was very difficult and we struggled to manage the learning of the youngsters who were faced by teachers in their mathematics lessons who were non-specialists and unfamiliar to them.

Most of the time when this happens in school it is not about being unable to recruit at the beginning of the academic year. Problems often occur when staff leave during the year or when staff are absent for long periods of time.

I hope to initiate a discussion about the possible strategies that could be employed to make sure that the effect of staff shortages on youngsters is minimised. In addition, I hope to offer some ideas.

Subject leaders may be wondering what sorts of things are expected of them in terms of analyising their KS3 and GCSE results. Even more so, sometimes making sense of the analysis can be even more tricky, even for us mathematicians. Although I don't claim to have all the answers, may I offer a few ideas that might help in this process. Having the right answers when the questions start coming for senior leaders and others can make the difference, but most of all, having an understanding about your position as a department to change and develop is extremely important.

Firstly, enrol some help, this should be a department activity. Share the workload with your colleagues by asking them to analyse SATs papers (each person could take a tier or a set of questions). Someone else could be asked to input the data into your department database (excel, access or other), this is normally best as a two-man job.

Once you have all of the information and you've checked it as much as possible, its time to start making sense of it. You will need to know the following key pieces of information.

• Pass rates eg A*-C, L5+ etc
• Conversion rates from KS2-3 and KS3-GCSE. Always a very useful indicator of how much impact you have had on progress. If you have alot  of youngsters making 2 levels progress KS2-3, thats really good, compare it to other years. If you have a large proportion of your Level 6 students acheiving A*-C and quite a few of your Level 5s as well, thats also good. Excel does something called a pivot table which is very useful, contact me if you want some help with it. Pauline McLean has also created a paper version of this onto which you write names straight on. I've added the file to the post.

Look at the names, who did really well and acheived more than you might have expected. Who didn't do as well as you would have liked. Were theses surprises? And if so, why? What other information have you been collecting on these youngsters and how well was it acted upon. This may be a good time to reflect on how well your tracking system is working.

If you can, explore the papers of these students to look for more clues.

Try looking at groups of students, girl/boy, cared for, gifted and talented etc including a look at how each class performed. I think its best not to be put off thinking you are naming and shaming teachers. Your responsibility is to the youngsters, the question is about your future development and the needs of the people working in your department.

Its now time to spend some time working with your department, share the information you have discovered and discuss what the needs of the department are. A good opportunity to work collaboratively and be open about future developments.

As a former LMT myself and having worked with LMTs in this role as Strategy adviser, I have wondered how we might work more closely in collaboration in development work and innovation whilst also verifying the work taking place.

In the future, LMTs could work together in small groups around Norfolk to participate in small scale action research projects. This would allow them to focus the work they do on the needs of the school and work with LMTs from schools with similar needs. Research would be carried out over a period of the year with varying degrees of intensity and then would be presented to the rest of the Leading Mathematics Teachers and other interested people at the end of the year in a research conference. I would anticipate that this would mean that the time taken out of school would be reduced and that there would be greater opportunity for teachers working in and around the research to benefit from the work that LMTs are involved in. The priorities would be collaboration and innovation and the intention is for as many poeple as possible to be able to benefit from the work.

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated, particularly ideas for topics of research.

Andy Edmonds