Product reviews for The Subject Leader

If you were to set an educational book a challenge perhaps none would be greater than to ask it to be so compelling that it manages to make exciting reading at the very end of the summer term. Steve Garnett has achieved this in The Subject Leader, I read the book on the first weekend of the summer holidays and found myself itching to put some of the ideas into practice. 

This is a book written with a deep understanding of what the task of a subject leader is and of how it can become the most exciting and fulfilling role in your career. All too often good teachers are promoted into this responsibility and left to fend for themselves; little recognition is given to the new challenges that the job brings and to the new skills that the subject leader needs to do the job really well. The Subject Leader addresses that need beautifully, clarifying the priorities for any subject leader and providing suggestions about how to make that really important thinking a shared vision across the whole team.
The book is well structured, taking the reader from the fundamentals of context and vision, through the essentials of self evaluation, both for the work of the team and the leader, a very important section on how to make your team the envy of the school and finally a chapter on handling the really difficult issues that can arise in teams. Steve deals with each topic with honesty and sharp focus; there is no room for ambiguity in the methods he suggests for analysing your team and its performance. However the writing is full of emotional intelligence and this makes the challenges acceptable, necessary and easy to respond to. The intriguing mechanical cartoons by Les Evans provide an excellent counterpoint to the text.

If you are already a subject leader then you will find much to celebrate in this book as you reflect on what you are doing well and what you relish about your job, you will also find yourself challenged and equipped to be better at what you do. If you are just about to embark on this role then this could be the book that makes your new job possible; there are some excellent ideas that will help you to start your team thinking along the right lines from the very first. If you are an aspiring subject leader there is a wealth of experience here that you will find inspiring and that will affirm your choice. From very practical suggestions about how to run team meetings, how to recognise and use the right leadership style and how to manage stress to the more fundamental issues about your own philosophy of education and the emotionally intelligent way to work with a team.

I think the book deserves to be given a wider audience. I would like it to be required reading for all senior leaders and indeed for all teachers; there is much wisdom and clarity of thinking here; in the current educational landscape we need books like this.