Relationships among staff and between staff and pupils, and the general ethos, were very good in 30% of departments and had more strengths than weaknesses in 55%. There were some important weaknesses in the remaining 15%. The quality of ethos was found to be closely related to the quality of leadership provided by the principal teacher. In most departments, morale was high with staff working well as a team. Teachers were generally hard-working and many were willing to give up some of their own time, for example at lunchtimes, to help pupils preparing for external examinations. Most had appropriately high expectations of behaviour and pupils generally responded well and worked purposefully in class. The strengths of departmental ethos are shown in box 12.
12Strengths of departmental ethos included:
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A few departments had established useful links with other subject departments, such as science, geography and technical education, to demonstrate to pupils specific applications of mathematics, such as aspects of algebra or graphical representation. Some collaborated effectively with computing teachers and arranged for them to cover aspects of information handling in S1/S2. In other cases, there was exchange of information between mathematics and other subject departments in order to ensure that mathematical content was covered in mathematics classes before it was needed elsewhere. More departments should establish effective links of these kinds. Many departments also developed pupils' interest in the subject by encouraging them to enter a variety of Scottish and UK mathematics competitions and a few ran mathematics clubs.