The Road Ahead

Winter is almost over and the beauty of the trees and frosty landscapes is slowly fading. There is an urgency to see new life, fresh beginnings, and a bit more of the sun. Nature will deliver in the weeks ahead.

This restlessness can also be felt in our schools at this half way point in the year when most of the curriculum for the exam classes has been covered and the long road to summer exams begins. Mocks over, targets set and heads down - hoping for the best.

Read more

Time To Listen

It is remarkable how our habits can change and become second nature. The last three years has been a huge social experiment as well as a medical emergency. It’s not often radical change happens quickly, so what can we learn from it? How do we move forward without simply slipping back to the old ways?
Read more

Towards the Light

It can be hard to see the light right now. There is a dark heavy feeling over the weeks, months, and possibly years ahead. Our schools are struggling with rising costs and increasing needs. Reports of shortfalls in budgets, staff recruitment issues, and increasing social problems have become the everyday business of all our schools.
Read more

All Change

The start of a new school year is generally a period of change within a framework of well practised systems and expectations. Well it was until about two and a half years ago. 
Read more

What is next for SEND policy and practice?

Many politicians have a fondness for looking back, hoping to find solutions for today’s problems in actions of the past. With a focus on grammar and ‘knowledge rich’ curricula, the marginalisation of skills-based learning, and the back-and-forth reintroduction of grammar schools, it is hard at times to see even a spark of a new idea.
Read more

Looking for HOPE

We live in unsettled times. The events in Europe over the past weeks, along with the pandemic, force us to reflect. It’s easy to take for granted the things we have and the way we live, it’s generally only when life as we know it is interrupted that we think about the small things that make it what it is.
Read more

What unites us, is much greater than what divides us

We have a long involvement with HOPE (Hospital Organisation of Pedagogues in Europe) and their president Jan encouraged me to write a post for their upcoming newsletter. I could not disappoint him, but where to start? There is so much happening in the world at the moment and not all of it is good.
Read more