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This is the Advanced Skills Teachers 'Standards' website
The role of Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) was devised to reward excellent teachers who wished to remain in the classroom and spend the equivalent of one day a week supporting other teachers in developing their skills and experience through the sharing of best practice ideas and approaches.
Below is some information about Advanced Skills Teachers and is intended to give you an outline of what they are and what they do.
The menu to the left gives you access to a case study that describes just one way in which ASTs have made a real impact.
What is an Advanced Skills Teacher?
ASTs are teachers who have been recognised through external assessment as having excellent classroom practice. They are given additional payment and increased non-contact time in order to share their skills and experience with other teachers, within their own school and from other schools.
What do ASTs do?
During their non-contact time an AST can reasonably be expected to undertake any of the following activities:
- Producing high quality teaching materials
- Disseminating materials relating to best practice and educational research
- Providing 'model' lessons to a whole class, or a target group of pupils eg. G & T, SEN, EAL etc., with staff observing
- Supporting a subject leader with regard to schemes of work, policies or management skills
- Observing lessons and advising other teachers on classroom organisation, lesson planning and teaching methods
- Helping teachers who are experiencing difficulties
- Participating in the induction and mentoring of newly qualified teachers
- Leading professional learning groups
- Supporting professional development
What do teachers who have become ASTs say?
"The great thing about the AST role is that it gives you a new impetus to develop, with opportunities to work in other schools, exchange ideas and try new approaches. I'm now able to undertake cross-phase work in primary and further education. Schools should be looking to have a career progression path available to everyone, but the management route doesn't always exploit the strengths of high quality teachers. The AST role does."
What do schools who have ASTs say?
"The AST programme helped us to retain a key member of our teaching staff by offering them a fresh set of professional challenges, without having to move into a management role. Our AST's outreach work with other schools has generated extremely positive feedback and there is no doubt that the AST scheme has raised our school’s profile. It has also allowed us to take on board alternative ways of working and made us look closely at our own practices to see if these could be improved."
What do OFSTED say?
"ASTs, where they have been appointed, are being regarded as key figures in school development and improvement."
How do I find out more?
If you would like to know more about ASTs you may find it useful to visit our main website at www.teachernet.gov.uk/ast To go to the main AST website now, please click here.
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