EdBlogs

Teaching naturally attracts conscientious people. That's not to say that teachers are saints, but they often have a tendency to put others' needs before their own. And when you are caught up in the daily bustle of school and home life, it is easy to get overwhelmed. The enormous workload of the job is also a factor. The latest government survey [pd...

When you have a leadership position within a school, at any level, there are two aspects of wellbeing that need your attention: your own, and that of those you lead. The two are related: if you do not safeguard your own wellbeing, you are less likely to be fully professionally effective, and you are not modelling the approach to wellbeing you want ...

Optimism: it's all about whether the glass half full or half empty, right? Wrong. It turns out that most people have the wrong idea of optimism. So what exactly is it? How important is it? And, most crucially, can you learn to be optimistic? Let's start with a quick test. You can choose only one answer per question. 1) You get lost driving to a fri...

I recently taught a PSHE lesson to a year 8 group on the assumptions we make about people. I started with the word "Australian" – students said common judgements were that they would say "g'day", wear cork hats, like beer, wear shorts, have barbecues all the time and be good at rugby. Then we moved on to "American" – apparently they like burgers, a...

Best known for: Appointed Chair of the Social Mobility Commission in October 2021, Katharine Birbalsingh first shot to fame following a speech she delivered at the 2010 Conservative Party Conference. Her heated rhetoric drew a lot of abuse on social media, and the nature of her sentiment apparently led the governors of the school she was ...