Is a sole leadership role is the perfect solution? Or is an extensive team is needed to lead a school to success? We have lived through changing times in education. No change there, then. In fact, living with and through a constantly changing world of education is often cited as a reason to call a… Read More »
There’s a rich history to one of Britain’s oldest girls’ schools Once upon a time, I was deputy head of the oldest girls’ school in the country, The Red Maids’ School in Bristol. On founder’s day every year – the school’s equivalent of speech day – the head girl read to the assembled parents, pupils,… Read More »
There’s been rampant growth in unconditional offers for university places I wonder if it’s too soon to write the eulogy for conditional offers of a place at university? An unconditional offer of a place at a university of your choice reminds me of Japanese knotweed – once a rare thing – now rampant in the land… Read More »
Independent schools play a vital role in supporting music in the curriculum Put the right child – boy soprano – in the right church, preferably ancient and candlelit, at the right time, as close to Christmas as possible, and even strong men may weep. There is something about a frosty December night, the silence and… Read More »
There’s lots of talk on how to be a more effective independent school governor – but why would anyone want to do it in the first place?
Edexcel has announced it will upload all of its marked A-level exam scripts; are we about to see A grades rise even further? OK, so first you have to know that I am writing this on A-level results day, and whatever I intended to write has just been trumped by the newspapers reporting, not the… Read More »
Schools praise their students; is it time that teachers get the same treatment?
What have I learned about the power of connections? Once upon a time, at a conference in a galaxy far away, a very new headteacher (like, two weeks in post) attended her first association conference. She had seen Heads under whom she had served shoot off for such an occasion towards the end of a… Read More »
What’s the gender pay gap in schools, and how does it impact senior leadership teams? It had to happen: the rhetoric of the business world seeps even further into education and now it reaches the most important people in schools: the pupils. This time, what we are observing is part business-speak – and, indeed, practice… Read More »
Building a school theatre is always a good idea. A wise and kindly headmaster once ticked me off for running a fund-raising campaign to build a new sports centre for the school of which I was headteacher, and which had not then entered The Schools Arms Race, with new facilities popping up like a rash.… Read More »