I posted something on twitter today – a sort of rhetorical exhalation on the subject of SATs ‘boosters’ during holidays. It’s received plenty of responses so I feel I must expand on this now and finish with (possibly) a controversial conclusion. One of my recent blogs championed the primary school as a place full of… Read More Happy Holidays.

I’ve been thinking about the leadership of both May and Corbyn, and what this tells us about the frailties and shortcomings of modern leadership. It is indeed in a sorry state. BUT, as we always reiterate to all our pupils, education is all about learning from mistakes, errors and misunderstandings. So, rather than blame and… Read More Leadership: What to take from May’s (and Corbyn’s) lack of it.

Are we in danger of losing the very soul of primary education? I’ve thought this a lot over the last few years, as a hostile target culture has kidnapped traditional primary education and handed it over to bureaucrats and talentless technocrats. We really are in danger of ruining what should be a gradual introduction to… Read More School Soul

‘Music has the power to change the world, because it can change people.’ (Bono) This is a such a powerful quote. However, as we complete our week here in Freetown/Waterloo, Sierra Leone, I would want to take it further. Because what happens when people have been changed by music? What does it cause them to… Read More In Harmony Abroad

On Sunday, I’m off to Freetown as part of a British Council ‘Connecting Classrooms’ visit, meeting up again with our partner schools, our friends and our teacher colleagues in Sierra Leone. We have an ambitious objective. (Actually, we’ve several, but for the purposes of this blog, I’ll stick to this one). We’re going to try… Read More Teaching Schools International

“Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.”  Judy Garland. Last week, I had a meeting with the manager of a local community centre. As so often happens when those now out of the education system meet someone who’s very much in it, they begin to… Read More Be Yourself.