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One of the key ideas that emerged from our member conference in December, which focused on neurodiversity, was the need to “usualise” the use of assistive technology.

I look around the education landscape with sadness and concern as the word “inclusion” has been diluted, misappropriated, and sometimes airbrushed out of everyday professional parlance.

Within any organisation, implementation matters. Leaders may be generating inspired, ground-breaking ideas, but without effective implementation, they will remain only that, an idea. Implementing change in schools is complex, requiring every member of staff to play their part.

I had the privilege of helping Lauren, my PA, to choose a primary school for her nearly 5-year-old twins. Two happy, but very different children.

After 33 years of teaching, following many different trains of thought, always amending my approach and trying earnestly to keep myself ahead of the game, I have found myself curiously captivated by what really is good feedback?

So why write another blog on middle leadership? Well, in one way the answer is simple. I would like you to ensure that you take up your three member places on our new Middle leaders’ programme which begins on 30 January 2025 or consider becoming a delivery partner for our National Award for Middle Leadership (NAML) programme.

It was great to see so many colleagues from across our network at our member event on 2nd December. It is always great to connect in person and share ideas.

I have been tracking every inspection carried out in England since the start of the 2023/24 academic year. The focus has been on what ‘need to improve’ comments have been made in inspection reports. There are now over 1,600 ‘need to improve’ comments published on reports conducted since the start of the academic year and so I wanted to identify some emergent themes.

Leading schools is exhausting and never more so when rapid changes are needed and the external climate is uncertain. In this post, I want to share a very personal experience of the challenges this very situation presented for me as a headteacher between 2019 and 2023.

This is the third and final of a trilogy of blogposts about SSAT’s Head Cases programme, which uses case studies and case methods to explore typical challenges facing headteachers.