I made a rare visit to Waitrose this morning having received some discount vouchers in the post. There were a range of vouchers for specific products and a general money-off coupon for spending more than a certain amount. It was sufficient to motivate me to be more extravagant than I normally would be on a … Continue reading Token gestures

“A map can never replicate the ground itself. Often our mapping sessions would induce us to bite off more than we can chew. At home we would plot a route over terrain that would, in reality, turn out to be sucking bog, or knee-high heather, or a wide boulder-field thick with snow. Sometimes a landscape … Continue reading In-between days

The essence of my talk at ResearchED Rugby 2019. Do you have a leadership position in a school? If so, think about the last day you were in work. For what proportion of the day were you leading? 100% (its everything I do!), 70%, 30%... less than 10%? And what were you doing that constituted … Continue reading There’s No Such Thing As Leadership

Green Eggs and Ham was published in 1960. It is a children's book, written by Dr. Seuss and contains only 50 words; a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, … Continue reading Green Eggs and Ham

Something has been bothering me recently about the messages coming out from Ofsted about the new inspection framework. I think the source of my concern is something to do with the external standard schools are being measured against. An expected standard is an attempt to set criteria against which an estimate of quality can be … Continue reading Ofsted: The Lion that Mewed

What if our primary demand of teachers was that they improve the school, not improve themselves? Our obsession with teacher-effectiveness means that the responsibility for school improvement is often placed on the shoulders of teachers. Only this morning, a high profile head teacher has illustrated this point by proclaiming that a condition of working in … Continue reading Self(ish) Improvement

In the lead up to my session at ResearchED Rugby on 15th June, I am serialising a chapter from my upcoming book on school leadership. If you want to find out more, come along. In Part 2 of this series of posts, I considered how intelligent we need our leaders to be. The conclusion was … Continue reading Do we need clever leaders? (pt3)

In the lead up to my session at ResearchED Rugby on 15th June, I am serialising a chapter from my upcoming book on school leadership. If you want to find out more, come along. In Part 1 of this series of posts, I considered how intelligent we want our leaders to be. The conclusion was … Continue reading Do we need clever leaders? (pt2)

In the lead up to my session at ResearchED Rugby on 15th June, I am serialising a chapter from my upcoming book on school leadership. If you want to find out more, come along. Part 1: Do we want our leaders to be clever? “Who's the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows … Continue reading Do we need clever leaders? (pt1)

Generic management practices run rife in many schools, and we’re beginning to wake up to how pervasive and damaging they can be. Flight paths appear to be the latest target for disdain. I’m all for rooting out the rot. However, we also need to understand how the rot set in, else it will happen again, … Continue reading When first we seek to control