For English Leads
The operational toolkit, not just curriculum content.
Whole-school reading and writing progression docs. Phonics scheme decision guide. Library setup and refresh. Reading-for-pleasure strategy. Monitoring walk prompts. Six 20-minute CPD sessions ready to deliver. The handover doc when you leave the role. Built for the person running English across the school — not for the class teacher of one year group.
English Lead work is the role most primary teachers find themselves doing alongside everything else. You're a class teacher first, often deputy or assistant head too, and the English Lead hat sits on top. The role spans phonics decisions in Reception, the Year 1 phonics screening check, KS2 SATs reading and writing, the school library, the staff team's confidence in teaching reading aloud, and the small but meaningful task of building a school where children actually want to read.
Most published English Lead resources focus on curriculum content — schemes of work, lesson plans, year group resources. LessonKind provides those too. But this page is about the OPERATIONAL stuff that's harder to find: the whole-school progression maps, the calculation-equivalent for English (phonics scheme decisions), the library audit, the monitoring walk prompts, the CPD that actually changes practice.
What's in the English Lead toolkit
The English Lead Toolkit collection contains 8 substantial resources covering the operational layer of the role.
- Whole-school progression docs — reading and writing skill progression Pre-K to Y6, the reference documents you'll return to most
- Reading-for-pleasure strategy — Open University's 4-strand model, library setup, reluctant reader strategies, what genuinely works
- Library setup and management — from tired room to vibrant reading hub, refresh cycles, pupil librarians
- Monitoring walk prompts — what to look for in 10-minute classroom visits without it feeling like inspection
- CPD pack for class teachers — six 20-minute INSET sessions ready to deliver, covering reading aloud, vocabulary, comprehension, feedback, RfP
- Handover document — for when you leave the role and want the next person not to start from scratch
See the toolkit collection Browse all English resources
Free resources for English Leads
Four resources from the toolkit are completely free — no signup required. They're the resources we'd want every English Lead to have on the first day in role:
- Whole-School Reading Progression — the year-by-year skill development reference
- Whole-School Writing Progression — composition vs transcription across the years
- Reading for Pleasure Strategy — the most important single thing you do
- Monitoring Walk Prompts — for your first round of classroom visits
Annotated model texts (WAGOLLs)
Year-group exemplar texts (Year 1 to Year 6) with colour-coded annotations for grammar, punctuation, spelling and text-type features. Free to use, free to print. Useful for shared writing, modelled writing, moderation evidence, and teacher CPD.
The deeper resources — phonics scheme decision guide, library setup and management, full CPD pack, handover doc — are member-only. They're the kind of infrastructure that turns "I'm new to this role" into "I know what I'm doing".
Why an English Lead membership is worth it
English Leads typically face three time pressures:
- You're holding the cohort's reading and writing progression across 7 year groups — and you can't be in 7 classrooms at once
- You're rebuilding documents that hundreds of other English Leads have rebuilt — calculation policies, reading progression maps, phonics rationales, library audits
- You're delivering CPD to colleagues who vary wildly in their confidence with English — and you don't have time to write each session from scratch
A $4.99/month membership pays for itself in the first staff meeting where you hand out the trauma-informed handout instead of writing it from scratch — or, in your case, the CPD session you didn't have to plan from zero. Plus full access to the rest of the catalog: 1028 resources across 28 subjects, including extensive curriculum content for every year group, the Y6 SATs Prep Pack covering all four papers, and the Secondary Transition Toolkit for Y6→Y7.
For headteachers
If your English Lead is reading this, three things you can do that genuinely help:
- Protect their non-contact time. An English Lead with no time to monitor, plan CPD, or run library refresh is just a class teacher with extra paperwork. Adequate non-contact time is the difference between a role that develops the school and a role that just exists on paper.
- Fund a library refresh budget. £500-£1000/year on new books transforms reading culture. The school library is one of the highest-leverage spending areas at primary; underfunding it undercuts everything else the English Lead is trying to do.
- Back consistent calculation-equivalent decisions. When the English Lead chooses a phonics scheme, the school commits to it for at least 3 years. Don't change scheme because of one cohort's screening data — embedding takes 18-24 months.
Related toolkits
Three other coordinator toolkits sit alongside the English Lead Toolkit, following the same operational-rather-than-curricular pattern:
- Maths Lead Toolkit — the mirror pack for the Maths Lead role
- Assessment Coordinator Toolkit — annual calendar, moderation, statutory deadlines, parent meetings
- Music Coordinator Toolkit — non-specialist support, repertoire banks, productions, instrument management
All four follow the same structure: whole-school progression doc, operational running-the-role docs, CPD for class teachers, handover doc, and something specific to the role's hardest problem.
Free starter pack
18 of our best resources — including the Whole-School Reading Progression, Reading for Pleasure Strategy, and Monitoring Walk Prompts — sent as a single PDF. No spam, no sales calls.
Download the pack