Remember this is a quick evaluation, which should take 30-60 minutes. Don't turn it into a major event. You need to find out the following...
a) Find out the extent of high-level planning already in place in your school in your subject. Some Heads of Department can tell you in September exactly what needs to be taught the following May; others will be more vague; some will be slightly surprised that anyone would even ask such a picky question: plenty of time to think about that later, we haven't even decided which Unit to teach next week....
Why bother? This information - the helicopter view of what will be taught over the course of the year, may not appear of immediate use. It is, however, psychologically important for a number of reasons: firstly, you may be able to forget about some aspects of the curriculum (for this year anyway); secondly, you can keep a look out for any resources which might be useful later in the year; and thirdly (most important) you have removed one element of uncertainty from your teaching life. It is very easy to become focused on the minutiae of teaching, the never-ending daily grind, and lose sight of the big picture; an awareness of the overall curriculum heps to avoid this.
b) Find out the quantity and quality of lesson resources already available in your school in your subject. Again: this is not an audit. You just need to sniff at the delicacies on offer, not consume the feast. Are there extensive libraries of electronic worksheets? Masses of PowerPoint presentations cross-referenced to Schemes of Work? Or just a tangled pile of homework sheets which someone used last year? You also need to tactfully establish the culture in your school as regards 'sharing' of resources. Some senior staff have decades of lesson materials squirreled away, these generous souls will offer you a lesson's worth of material on any topic, gratis. Others consider their lessons as gems too precious for the likes of you and me;
Why bother? Hopefully, it's obvious why you should do this. It is far too common in Secondary schools for newly-qualified teachers to re-invent the wheel. If you are preparing a PowerPoint presentation on a National Curriculum topic, pause for a moment and reflect that dozens of teachers nationwide may be doing exactly the same thing; and that hundreds must have already done this in the past.
c) Find out the extent of prescriptive bureaucracy in your department and your school. In other words: can you choose what topics to teach? what resources to use? how to assess? when to assess?
Why bother? Again, the intention here is to avoid wasted effort. If your school has pre-defined assessment material, then you would be unwise to teach material which isn't aligned with this assessment. On the other hand, if you have a freer reign, you can realistically look elsewhere for lesson ideas and material - remember, even if your school has lots of existing lesson plans, the Web may have even more, and your old PGCE colleagues may have better ones. Don't be constrained by your school's resource stock unless you have to; however, you also need to be mindful about any constraints in your school, like download limits or photocopying quotas.
d) Find out the availability of off-the-shelf teaching material in your subject. Some subjects are lucky in this respect and have whole websites dedicated to the secondary curricula; other subjects scrabble for scraps on general purpose sites like TES.
Why bother? Another obvious time-saver. Put together, points (b) and (d) define your 'nest'. This is the word we give to the accumulation of pre-defined lesson resources, lesson content, and lesson ideas which you have available. You may feel as an NQT that you are at a severe disadvantage here, and that teachers with 20 years experience will have an enormous nest compared to yours.
e) The expectations and routine which prevail in your school regarding lessons. Some students in some schools are acclimatised and happy if they simply chug through the texbook; some classes can work quietly and productively without much supervision or guidance. These options and approaches ("just carry on where we finished last week..".) just aren't available to you in more enlightened schools or with more demanding students. For trainee teachers it is sometimes difficult to establish exactly what goes on behind classroom doors: remember that you will probably be asked to observe the best teachers in the school, and that the 'everyday' lessons may be much more mundane.
Why bother? Now let's be clear about this: we are not suggesting that you should teach dull lessons, based on a standard textbook or repetitive formulae, or that you should eschew good practice. However you should establish early on what options exist and what practices are accepted. I had nearly completed my NQT year before I found out that I was the only teacher in the school who actually followed the published homework policy.