A Guide to Creating a Subject Departmental Staff Handbook

I created a subject department handbook for my Maths Department during my 15 years as Head of Mathematics. I’m sure that the final version I produced would, by now, have changed substantially in the content of each section. However, there would be little change in the section headings. It is important that your staff handbook is always a project in progress.

It took me three years to produce my first handbook. It began as an amalgamation of all my policy statements I had made during those three years. I was lucky that a fellow Head of Department showed me his Department Handbook. It became my starting model.

I expanded his model and added my own ideas as years went by. Each year, I reviewed the document. Most changes were slight although I added extra sections as time went by.

The main goals of a Departmental Staff Handbook are

• to create a common set of policies, guidelines and procedures that all staff can follow to ensure all students are treated equally and consistently.

• Secondly, the goal was to inform staff of what resources were available to them and where to find them.

• Thirdly, it gave advice on issues such as discipline, excursion procedures and computer room rules and so on.

• Fourthly, it detailed procedures that occurred only once a semester or once a year, e.g. reporting procedures and comments.

Each staff member would receive one Department Handbook annually. Contract teachers also received one during their time with us.

Initially, we set these handbooks up in a folder with drop in pages. The idea was to reduce paper usage by simply replacing the out-dated pages with their replacement pages. However, I found this did not work satisfactorily, mainly because these replacement pages were often issued unfortunately at times when teachers had more pressing issues to deal with. The pages were simply put in the back of the folder and were often misplaced or lost so I decided to produce a booklet printed on both sides and stapled together with a light cardboard cover.

The handbooks were collected at the end of each year for reissue or replacements in the next year. I always had several extra copies available for contract and trainee teachers. I also kept the superseded copies and made them available to trainee teachers and interested teachers from other schools to take home.

The list that follows is just a start of what a Departmental Handbook may look like. As a head of a subject department, you may have inclusions that relate directly to your teaching area. (In a following article, I suggest what topics might be added, perhaps, as an addendum.)

Organisation of classes in each year level; work programs;

Assignment policy-staff only; Assignment policy-students only;

Assessment; reporting to parents;

Unit coordinators role; writing assessment instruments;

Preparation of students for assessment; reporting and exit comments;

Responsibilities of contract/relief teachers; Homework policy

Discipline in the subject department; textbook hire scheme;

Department building, guidelines for use; student bookwork.

Use this as a starting model only and put your own stamp on it. In the latter years of my career, my handbook became a model that newly appointed Heads of Department at my school used to create their own.