This book highlights issues which underpin the professional capabilities of existing and aspiring subject leaders. The content is designed to build on the skills, knowledge, understanding and attributes which serving Heads of Department and subject co-ordinators already possess. Sections are provided on:
*essential knowledge and understanding for the role
*strategic planning and development
*monitoring and evaluating teaching and learning
*leading and managing staff to raise achievement.
The emphasis throughout is on corresponding with the National Standards set by the Teacher Training Agency. Through focused activities the book aims to set challenges in practical contexts and to help subject leaders to plan ahead and improve subject provision in order to raise standards.

'A complete rollercoaster romp of a story... Kit has a created cast of heroes and villains whose escapades leave the reader crying with laughter and gasping with horror... But the story also has an emotional depth and poignancy which resonates long after the final page has been turned.' - Ruth Hogan Now if you were a poor Gypsy mush, who'd had a run of bad luck and whose ever-loving was done with managing on thin air, and someone was to offer you a lucrative run of work, what would you do? Okay, so it's not legit, but sometimes it's got to be worth the risk. You could buy your lovely Zilla all that her heart desires, you could stand your rounds at the kitchema without counting the money in your pocket, update your van, put a deposit on a bit of ground to call your own. So you do it, you take the work and you take the risk, but then it all blows up in your face and you've pulled your loved ones into danger. Well worse than danger. And now you're going to have to take yourself away, disappear from sight. Be the undead playing at being dead. By the author of Thursday Nights at the Bluebell Inn, this Own Voices novel reveals, with compassion and humour, the precarious lives of its characters in a story where, sometimes, the mystical and the everyday worlds converge.

'Kit Fielding's debut is a triumph. A story told with brutal honesty, underpinned by humour, love, hope and the inestimable power of friendship.' RUTH HOGAN, author of The Keeper of Lost Things In every pub in every town unspoken stories lie beneath the surface. Each week, six women meet at The Bluebell Inn. They form an unlikely and occasionally triumphant ladies darts team. They banter and jibe, they laugh. But their hidden stories of love and loss are what, in the end, will bind them. There is Mary, full of it but cradling her dark secret; Lena - young and bold, she has made her choice; the cat woman who must return to the place of her birth before it's too late. There's Maggie, still laying out the place for her husband; and Pegs, the dark-eyed girl from the travellers' site bringing her strangeness and first love. And Katy: unappreciated. Open to an offer. They know little of each other's lives. But here they gather and weave a delicate and sustaining connection that maybe they can rely on as the crossroads on their individual paths threaten to overwhelm. With humanity and insight, Kit Fielding reveals the great love that lies at the heart of female friendship. Raw, funny and devastating, all of life can be found at the Bluebell.

'A complete rollercoaster romp of a story... Kit has a created cast of heroes and villains whose escapades leave the reader crying with laughter and gasping with horror... But the story also has an emotional depth and poignancy which resonates long after the final page has been turned.' - Ruth Hogan Now if you were a poor Gypsy mush, who'd had a run of bad luck and whose ever-loving was done with managing on thin air, and someone was to offer you a lucrative run of work, what would you do? Okay, so it's not legit, but sometimes it's got to be worth the risk. You could buy your lovely Zilla all that her heart desires, you could stand your rounds at the kitchema without counting the money in your pocket, update your van, put a deposit on a bit of ground to call your own. So you do it, you take the work and you take the risk, but then it all blows up in your face and you've pulled your loved ones into danger. Well worse than danger. And now you're going to have to take yourself away, disappear from sight. Be the undead playing at being dead. By the author of Thursday Nights at the Bluebell Inn, this Own Voices novel reveals, with compassion and humour, the precarious lives of its characters in a story where, sometimes, the mystical and the everyday worlds converge.

In every pub in every town unspoken stories lie beneath the surface.

Each week, six women meet at The Bluebell Inn. They form an unlikely and occasionally triumphant ladies darts team. They banter and jibe, they laugh. But their hidden stories of love and loss are what, in the end, will bind them.

There is Mary, full of it but cradling her dark secret; Lena - young and bold, she has made her choice; the cat woman who must return to the place of her birth before it's too late. There's Maggie, still laying out the place for her husband; and Pegs, the dark-eyed girl from the travellers' site bringing her strangeness and first love. And Katy: unappreciated. Open to an offer.

They know little of each other's lives. But here they gather and weave a delicate and sustaining connection that maybe they can rely on as the crossroads on their individual paths threaten to overwhelm.

With humanity and insight, Kit Fielding reveals the great love that lies at the heart of female friendship.

Raw, funny and devastating, all of life can be found at the Bluebell.