Blog

Last year, I had the pleasure of joining The Teaching Commission, chaired by former NEU joint general secretary Professor Mary Bousted and supported by the major teaching unions and other partners. The Commission’s remit for 2025 was to examine the root causes of the teacher recruitment and retention crisis and identify practical, actionable recommendations to make teaching an attractive, sustainable profession again.

Marius Frank’s blog reframes disability, adding children “disabled by circumstance” whose poverty, trauma, inequity or other unidentified needs create similar barriers to learning: barriers that can eased so that more children achieve and thrive.

At the end of last week we received the very sad news that Barry Cooke has died.

Nigel Farage is the only politician to describe Britain as broken according to the former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. The Labour Government talks about the many problems they inherited from the Tories. People complain that the NHS, transport, immigration, water, trains, etc are not working. We no longer have a rules-based international order and President Trump causes concern to many people daily. Change is needed – not just for a few people, but for everyone.

Lucy Easthope, is UK’s leading authority on recovering from disaster. She has been advisor on nearly every major disaster of the past two decades, including the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, 9/11, the 7/7 bombings, the Salisbury Poisonings, Grenfell. Most recently advising the Prime Minister’s Office on the Covid-19 pandemic.

For the past year, some of the education team at SSAT have been working with school leaders from the network and colleagues from the EEF and the Research Schools Network, as part of EEF’s Working Through Others project.

With a clear focus on inclusion in the new inspection framework, what better way to show your commitment to this than through enhancing student voice and leadership mechanisms at your school?

I am an optimist. If there is anything that my seventeen years as a Politics teacher and school leader have taught me, it is that young people are enormously capable, passionate, empathetic and care about the world they live in.

When schools are fully ready for inspection processes, school leaders are enabled to focus on demonstrating their school’s true purpose. When this happens, inspection outcomes are more likely to validate school self-evaluation and recognise their culture.

The theme for Black History Month 2025, “Standing Firm in Power and Pride,” is both a celebration and a call to action. It honours the resilience and achievements of Black communities while inviting us to actively shape spaces where voices from Black and global majority heritage backgrounds are heard, valued, and celebrated.