What if losing someone actually strengthened your team?

Can I offer a different take on resignation season? What if losing someone didn’t automatically lead to ‘oh no’. What if it meant space. Space to strengthen. Space to raise standards. Space to shift the balance of your team. Recruitment isn’t just about filling posts. It’s about increasing the number of people who make your school stronger.

It’s exam season. You’re more ready than you think

It’s exam season. If you’re leading a school right now, you’ll be feeling it. The preparation. The pressure. The responsibility. But here’s the thing — you’ve already done the work.

The mistake most heads make after a resignation

When someone resigns, it’s easy to panic. Advert. Replace. Move on. But sometimes that instinct costs more than we realise. Before you automatically refill a post, there’s one smarter question you’ll love asking!

The 31 May resignation deadline

31 May is closer than you think. It’s resignation season soon. And even if nothing has happened yet, there’s often that little flicker of: “Here we go again…” Before the notices land, there’s one simple shift that makes recruitment season steadier and stronger.

What this term proved about your strength, courage and heart

There’s a particular kind of tired that only school leaders understand. It’s the tired that comes from holding the impossible — and still creating magic anyway. Every head I’ve spoken to this term has carried some version of the same heartbreak: There isn’t enough funding. There isn’t enough support. There isn’t enough of you to go around.

For the head who feels ‘good but stuck’ right now

When you’re in the thick of school life, it’s easy to forget this simple truth: You’re closer to great than you think. I’m reminded of it every time I walk into one of the schools in Outstanding Against the Odds. None of them started in an easy place. Many began where you might be now. And yet they moved.

One small shift that separates good schools from excellent ones

There’s a quiet way school culture erodes — not through big blow-ups, but through tiny tolerances that slip in unnoticed. A missed deadline. A lesson that isn’t quite good enough. A comment that lands a bit too sharply. Have you seen this?

A clear way to protect your biggest investment this year

Welcome back — I know Spring 2 can feel financially tight, emotionally tight, and time tight. So here’s something honest to start the term with. A head said something to me recently that stopped me in my tracks: “I spend £2 million on staff. I’m not going to worry about £60k on CPD.” And she’s right. We talk about CPD like it’s a “nice-to-have”. A luxury. Something to trim when the budget hurts. But when you strip it back, CPD is the thing that protects the biggest investment you make every single year: your people.

Here’s how the best schools turn policies into lived behaviours

School leaders tell me this all the time: “We’ve shared the policy. We’ve explained it in briefing. Everyone nodded. So why aren’t people actually doing it?”

When funding feels impossible, focus here

There’s a lot you can’t control right now. The funding formula. Energy costs. National pay scales. All set elsewhere — and often without any sense of your reality on the ground. But here’s the hopeful bit: You can’t control the funding. You can control the impact.

Category: Excellence in schools

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