Anne Milburn, Viv Thompson, Deb Gibbs
In New Zealand by the end of 2009 most primary schools will have participated in Phase 1 professional development of the Numeracy Development Project (NDP). The project is now in its 9th year after the pilot ‘Count Me In Too’. Having self-managing schools in numeracy is the focus of Phase 2 of the project. Therefore the direction of support in the future will be towards maintaining quality teaching in classrooms. As schools are working on sustainability of good numeracy teaching and learning, the role of Lead Teacher is becoming more critical. They have as part of their role the continuous improvement of teacher practice. They also have a greater responsibility in improving, monitoring and reporting progress of students. Maintaining the momentum can be a difficult task and requires support from principals and facilitators in order to carry out Lead Teacher multi-layered responsibilities. Further to Deb Gibbs and Marilyn Holmes roundtable presentation at MERGA in 2006, facilitators have continued to explore issues around the role of Lead Teachers. Three years later, have changes for the better taken place or has the status quo remained? This small study focuses on how well the Lead teachers make use of the time allowed and looks at answers to the following questions: 1.Has the perceived value of the Lead Teacher role increased over time? 2.Has the support given to Lead Teachers to carry out their role effectively changed? Discussion around this study will highlight implications for lead teachers, principals and facilitators in numeracy.