Welcome back! A shiny new school year! I hope you had a great break, and have come back rested and recharged to work your magic, to give your communities’ children great education. And at the start of the year I bet you’ve got some great new initiatives in mind. Something that is going […]
It’s late Friday morning, so it must be time for a story… There is an Executive Head of three schools. All three schools are situated in tough areas. They don’t have a wealthy benefactor giving them money. Unsurprisingly, they have increased complex needs. Yet 2 of those schools were judged outstanding in 2024. […]
How do some schools do it? How do they manage all the national pressures? Increased complex SEND needs Lack of funding Recruitment crisis Falling roll And then on top of that, the local challenges and nuances of their context? It’s a question I’ve been researching since 2011, finding these schools, visiting them, learning from them. […]
Can you imagine, if as teachers, we didn’t actively improve our children’s behaviour? That our job was just about learning and not behaviour. Bonkers, right?! It might be a nice idea, but the reality is we’re always developing our children’s behaviour in so many ways. And we certainly catch it when it’s not as […]
I recently got this message from a headteacher: ‘We are a school that has moved from Special Measures to Requires Improvement in 11 months.All indicators suggest we will be good however I am not aiming for Good for Ofsted. I want an outstanding provision for our students and any CPD that makes us think […]
For over a decade I’ve been helping sort out those tricky staff issues in schools; the ones which require a difficult conversation to fix. Soon after I started, I noticed some issues cropping up regularly. So I started to ask other schools if they needed to have a conversation about any of these issues with […]
It’s hard in school right now. Falling rolls. Recruitment challenges. Complex needs like we’ve not seen before. I get it. What can you do about it? There’s only so much in your control. And sadly a lot of aspects that aren’t. I’m always looking for those schools who are achieving above average success, in […]
I know a lot of you are having difficult conversations with parents. And there seem to be more of these conversations. And they seem to be harder. Do you have a parent who keeps coming in for a range of issues? A tip many find useful is to arrange a regular meeting with […]
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