Reflections of an ex-head teacher

I was thinking just now about what I would be doing this week if I were still a headteacher. I reckon that about 60% of my time this week would have been taken up by  Standing on the edge of our school field and telling children to go back into class to get their hats and put them on before playtime/lunchtime Explaining to grumpy year six children who thought they were too cool to wear hats, why they needed to do so Collecting unnamed hats that had been discarded by children whilst playing and attempting to return them to their owners Writing letters and reminders via social media to our parents relating to hats, summer school uniform variations and sun cream In light of that, I thought I would try writing the letter I would have liked to have sent out when I was a headteacher. Feel free to 'magpie' this for your own schools if you wish! Dear Parents, There is not really any excuse for sending your child to school on a sunny day without a hat, is there? You can pick them up in ...

  Happy Easter! I need to start by contextualising this post. I respect the Christian festival of Easter, and I am not attempting to undermine their beliefs. My comments merely reflect my interest in where some of the traditions that we all follow come from. Anyway, I am currently trying to write a ‘folk horror’ story for children, which has involved doing some research about Pagan traditions in our country. Since it is April, I was naturally drawn to the myths relating to Easter. By the way, ‘folk horror’ is a genre of horror that focuses on myths, legends, and folklore in general. It is usually set in rural areas, and as I have lived all my life in Somerset, I know quite a bit about them! I read with interest about the Anglo-Saxon Goddess Eostre. She was celebrated in the fourth month of the year, ‘Eosturmonath,’ so it is not a huge leap to conclude that the modern celebration of Easter took her name. Over time, the story developed, as myths tend to, and the Easter Hare, known as...

Today's post is about school trips and was inspired by a walk I went on with my dad yesterday. I live in the sleepy seaside town of Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset, where the walk in question took place. My dad is a bit of a history buff, and I recently bought him a book about Somerset in WW2, which mentioned Burnham. So, I thought it would be fun to see if we could visit the part of town mentioned in the book. After the lovely weather we have had recently, it was disappointing to see leaden skies yesterday afternoon. Undaunted, we put on our coats and walked along the beach a few hundred yards from where I live to try and find a piece of WW2 history. It didn't take us long to do so, as I knew roughly where to look. I suspect that very few people who use the beach this year will know the significance of the concrete blocks we spotted. They had been used to reinforce a section of the sea wall to the north of the town, but we knew exactly what they were. They were sections of the two...

On April 9th, 2024, we experienced the worst weather in my hometown since the 1980s. Extremely high tides arrived on the same day as 70mph winds, which meant there were some spectacular sites for anyone brave enough to venture close to the sea wall that day. I recorded this short video on my phone for prosperity. Fast-forward 365 days to April 9th, 2025. Things were slightly different yesterday, as this picture taken on my trip to Wells shows! 'That's all very interesting', I imagine you are thinking, 'but why is he sharing this on his blog?' Well, the difference between the weather on these two days, exactly one year apart, perfectly mirrors my change in mental state since the first video was taken. In April 2024, I was feeling battered and bruised after thirty years in teaching and nearly two decades in leadership roles. After leading the school through the pandemic, three Ofsted's, budgets shrinking year by year, the SEN crisis and withstanding the battering ...

  I made a meme. That's a sentence I didn't think I would ever write. I am currently writing about interviews for introverts for a longer piece, and for some reason, Liam Neeson's speech from Taken came into mind. I am sure there are a million of these 'taken memes,' but I am pretty proud of this one! The point I am trying to make is that, when being interviewed, introverts should not try to be more 'extro' but celebrate the 'particular sets of skills' they can bring to leadership roles. Obviously, it helps if they are given the chance to shine in an introvert-friendly process, which is the other part of the piece I am writing.

Another day, another incident in the media where a school, or more precisely a head, is crucified for 'outrageous' behaviour. Another chance for the political media to express their trumpian, or is it muskian, anger about the downfall of free speech in the uk. It's all bollocks though, isn't it? There is no room for nuance anymore. No balance in the way these things are reported, they are presented as news when they are really the manifesto of the right. Some facts that don't appear in all the stories.  1. Schools dont ban parents from the site just because of negative WhatsApp messages. If they did then our playgrounds would be half empty  2. The parent in question was an ex governor of the school that their complaints are focused on.  3. The parent in question appears to be a local councillor. 4. The parent in question is a freelance producer who has worked for a right-leaning broadcaster. 5. In my experience of nearly 20 years as a school leader, the most challen...