Last week we held our annual capability conference: Tackle Under-Performance Quickly, Kindly And Legally   Clare Fowler, Employment Solicitor at the charity YESS Law, shared the four most common reactions from people who are unhappy when you start talking to them about improving their performance: It came out of the blue, I wasn’t expecting it. […]

I love the phrase: environment is the third teacher. What is your environment whispering to your children and staff team about your standards? Let’s talk about display boards. They can be a chore. Especially if you have a lot of them. You and your team are busy and working hard. And these really might be […]

I look at school Ofsted history all the time.   I know, I know; you don’t do what you do for Ofsted. But I find the majority of Ofsted judgements are accurate. Controversial, I know, and there are exceptions. So if we say 80% of judgements are right then what do we see in a […]

Since 2011 my team and I have been helping school leaders to resolve their difficult conversations. As you can imagine we’ve seen a lot in that time. There are five common conversations we see pop up all the time. In fact only 4% of schools have told me that they don’t have any of these […]

Right, it’s the second half of the school year. What are you going to do with it? Most schools are good. Most schools stay at good. This is…well…good. But as one headteacher of a good school recently wrote to me: The way I think things are –  nothing is significantly wrong but so much more […]

Herding cats?Sticking jelly to the wall?Same stuff, different day? Whatever phrase you like to use, my guess is the idea is a familiar one – the quest for plans and policies to be followed with consistency. This is a hallmark of schools who are stuck in ‘good’.I call them the ‘agains’…you might be familiar with […]

I see this all the time. Plans are made, results aren’t as good as expected, so plans are changed.Plans keep changing, but people don’t. (Although the great ones move on too quickly!). What I find in schools is that your plans are fine. The problem is everyone isn’t doing them for some reason or other. […]

Who told you that as a Headteacher you’d have to fulfil so many roles? Granted, as a teacher, you wore a lot of hats. But as a head you’re a budgetter, HR, health and safety and so much more. And when it comes to people, well, how well do you know the legal side of […]

How are you? I hope you were able to have a wonderful Christmas break, a great time with loved ones and hopefully some rest and relaxation. I learnt something recently which shocked me. Priority was originally a singular word. Mind. Blown. Because we always talk about priorities. It got me thinking. If we were only […]