What’s the no. 1 challenge teachers from across the sector are reporting right now? It isn’t English or maths, or even financial hardship; though I don’t wish to diminish the enormous challenge of any of these. It’s wellbeing. Or could I be a bit provocative – is it the helplessness teachers feel when they are rightly stretching and challenging their learners… who then play the ‘mental health’ card? This is a minefield, I know. I’m not for one moment suggesting […]

Sometime ago, I watched a college observer evaluating a flower-arranging lesson. It was delivered by a pro who gave up her time once a week to run an evening class. And it was one of those lessons you really wished you were involved in, rather than watching! When the observer fed back, their criticism was that the teacher hadn’t used any learning technology. This gave me a mild moral dilemma. As an observer of the observer, I shouldn’t be challenging […]

The other day, I was speaking at a college’s new years’ conference, for which the principal provided a great introduction. But towards the end of the presentation, the principal attempted to “rally the troops” for what they feel is an imminent visit from Ofsted. You could tell staff had been ‘rallied’ many times before… too many times, perhaps. When I was a full-time inspector, first with the wonderful ALI, then with Ofsted, one of my substantive roles was to run […]

Tomorrow, we’ll be looking at one of the quickest ‘wins’ for teachers. In fact, it’s not just about teachers, it’s fundamentally about anyone planning any project. When designing a lesson or a project, we can be overwhelmed, without us knowing, by the desire to ‘crack on’ – to jump straight to the actions: “What I’m going to do is…” We often see this when teachers know their subject very well – they know how to do their stuff. But this […]

I’m curious where the motivation to hang on to custom-and-practice comes from when it doesn’t make the difference we ideally want. I’m sure you all know Einstein’s neat quote on this one.. In an education setting, is it because of the culture of an organisation, or more specifically the proclivities of a particular senior leader? Or could it be laziness? Or do we just blame someone else? Do you know what I mean? For instance, blaming learners if something doesn’t […]