My run slowed to a shuffle and then stopped altogether. I was 10 miles from home and the cold March rain hammered down. I sat on the muddy verge by a particularly soulless stretch of the A38 and burst into tears. The jig was up. After helping my once failing school back from the brink […]

This is a shortish blog as I’ve had a few questions about the ‘Post it RAP’ which was mentioned in my blog on School Development Planning.  So you’ve written your SDP, the Action Plans are all complete and you feel that you and your staff know what needs to be done this year. Flicking through […]

Writing a School Development Plan is simple, right? Look at your data, have a chat with colleagues about what needs to be done, have a look on the DfE website and see whether they’ve got any ideas and off you go!  20 pages later you have something for everyone; a veritable smorgasbord of important things which […]

The thing with being the Headteacher is that everyone wants to talk to you all the time. This is nice – we’re sociable people, us Heads. However, to manage your workload as a Head, you’ll need to manage your time. And that isn’t as simple as it seems. So again forgive me for stating the […]

I hadn’t intended to take over a school in difficulty. It wasn’t the plan. But on an April evening in 2007 (as I was stepping out of the door for my leaving do at the school where I was Deputy) the phone rang. It was the Chair of Governors at the school where I was […]

This is the post excerpt.