Notes for school coordinators
First steps
All schools taking part in Number Partners must appoint a school
coordinator to take responsibility for the way it runs at school.
As a school coordinator, you will need to:
- Register
your school on this site to become a member of Number Partners and
receive updates and useful information.
- Understand what your school hopes to achieve by establishing a
relationship with a local business or employer.
- Agree your school's commitment with the head and teaching staff
in order to release students from their timetabled lessons or over
lunchtime.
- Consider the minimum and maximum numbers of volunteers that you
will need for the programme to be viable.
- Find a local employer able to
provide volunteer Number Partners.
- Find a suitable space and time for Number Partners sessions to
take place each week.
- With assistance from other staff, choose suitable students to
take part in the programme.
- Have an initial meeting with your business partner's volunteer
coordinator.
- Meet and brief the volunteers before their first session with
students; this may also be an induction to your school.
- Check that all volunteers have successfully completed their
Number Partners training and assessment and police or criminal
record checks by asking to see a copy of their Number Partners
certificates and police disclosure or CRB documentation.
- Liaise with volunteers as often as possible to keep up to date
with progress, and to advise on students' performance and
behaviour; you may want the volunteers to write in the Number
Partner learning diaries.
- Stay in touch with the volunteer coordinator on a regular basis
to suggest and hear ways of improving or developing Number Partners
sessions, to discuss holiday dates in advance etc.
- If requested by the Number Partner
Consortium, help evaluate the programme at the end of each year
and, perhaps, undertake evaluation as part of your own approach to
ensure that objectives are being met
- Discuss any evaluation with the volunteer coordinator in order
to identify ways of developing the programme in the following
year.
Download the Coordinators Handbook.
Other notes
Finding an employer:
Your school may well have a business link in place. If that's
the case, why not find out if that organisation would like to offer
volunteer Number Partners? You could also talk to the member of
staff responsible for work related learning. There are bound to be
lots of local companies and organisations who might be interested
in establishing a partnership of this kind with your school.
Consult your headteacher, senior management team, governors and
parents who might be able to make suggestions and approach suitable
organisations in the area.
If you're not successful in finding a partner yourselves, a
local business link organisation, such as many EBP (Education
Business Partnership) members of the Institute of Education Business Excellence,
might be able to help match up your school with an employer in the
area. There is also useful information on the Teacher's
guide to employer engagement website.
Selecting students:
Schools are responsible for choosing the students who will
benefit most from time with a Number Partner. Choose two or three
students to work in a group with each Number Partner for at least
one term. These might be students who:
- are not confident at contributing in class
- have difficulty working with others, especially at taking
turns
- require additional time and support to develop their numeracy
skills
- are particularly confident in maths and need time to stretch
their knowledge and understanding.
You might wish to inform parents and carers that their children
are working with a Number Partner.
Selecting games:
Number Partners sessions revolve around number games. It's
important that the school coordinator and the volunteer coordinator
agree on the most appropriate games to meet students' needs. There
are downloadable versions of tried and tested Number Partners games
on this website, as well as details of where these can be purchased
if you would like to have games boxes in your school. Your business
partner may be willing to purchase games for the school or share
the cost. Please visit our resources section for more
information.
A typical Number Partners session
"I usually arrive at the school five or ten minutes before
my session starts, so I can have a quick chat with the teacher and
catch up on what's been going on with my kids. Pamela and Abdul
collect me from the main corridor and we go along to the library
with the other Number Partners. It usually takes a while to get
them going, so we have a chat about what they've been doing in
class in the past week. Then, we choose a game which we play
together for about 20 minutes. I try to get them to tell me how
they arrive at their answers, and they're sometimes not very
confident, but now that I've been working with them for three
months, they're getting better. At the end of the session, we fill
in the diaries which I leave for their teacher, before heading back
to the office." A current volunteer.