One of the biggest challenges I faced as a school leader over the last five years was trying to find adequate places for some of our young people to go after school. And I don’t mean a nice looking destination on a spreadsheet. I mean a place that might actually work. Because there is a ma

The bit I keep coming back to with the Gemma Collins / Bridget Phillipson videos is not even the first video. That was misguided enough. It was another strange education comms decision in a growing pile of strange education comms decisions. A bit forced. A bit tone deaf. A bit “whose ide

I know I’ve posted about this before, so apologies in advance if this is me dragging the same point back out again. But after five and a half days of interviews, I think I need to get it out of my system. “All behaviour is communication.” There it is. The phrase. And before anyone st

I’ve learned a lot from meetings where I’ve walked in thinking I knew exactly where I stood, and walked out slightly less sure. That is a horrible little feeling when you’re the one representing the school. You’ve got the chronology in your head. You know why the decision was made. You know

I keep looking at the assessment and exam world our children are moving through and wondering what it is actually for. SATs. GCSEs. Functional Skills. I understand the need for qualifications. I do. There has to be some way of showing that a young person can read, write, think, probl

You have to say no. You have to hold a line. You have to make a decision that might make you look like the bad guy for a bit. That is part of the job. But I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming people will understand the thinking behind it. For me, a massive part of