@SBL365

I work a 52 week contract, which means I'm in school most of the summer holidays. And can I be completely honest? The last 4 weeks have been bliss. Even though I've only managed to take about 4 days of actual leave, going to work has been a joy. Why? Because there's be...

I hate this time of year. It's miserable, cold, damp & dark. Everyone's broke after Christmas and from ploughing through the longest January on record. In SBL land it's the time of forecasting  year end figures on an hourly basis, because with budgets as tight as your...

If you can keep your Head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust your Head when all men doubt them,

But make allowance for their doubting you;

If you support and don’t expect supporting,

Get moaned about, and not resort to moans,

If unde...

I’m the youngest of 3 children. I have a brother and a sister. A bossy, determined, intelligent, hardworking, and well-behaved elder sister who carved a pathway so full of high expectations and excellence throughout our school years that her scruffy, disorganised and o...

I had an article published recently where the editor had described me as a “champion of collaboration”. I was completely delighted because:

a) it proved that at least one person had actually read some of the stuff I write where I bang on about schools working together f...

So the Varndean Goats have made it onto the TES list of the top ten most influential ‘people’ (we’re not people, we’re goats #SpeciesEd) of 2017. And we’re utterly delighted. 

The goats are currently away at their country retreat for the festive season, but in true supe...

I went to a conference this week. My calendar planned it as follows:

Tuesday 3.30pm: Leave for Hotel

Weds 9.00am: Leave hotel for Conference

Weds: 9.30am to 3.30pm: Attend Conference

Weds: 3.30pm Leave for home

Weds: 8.00pm Arrive home.

Here’s how it actually went:

Monday 9.0...

My daughter is 13. She has refused to wear pink or play with anything resembling a doll, household appliance or a plastic horse since she was two. I can count the number of dresses she’s worn in the last 8 years on my thumbs – two, both bridesmaid dresses which she wor...

I’m puzzled. And I don’t like being puzzled. I think I must have misread something along the way or got the wrong end of the stick. Somehow or other, and I don’t know how, the defining lines between workload and wellbeing have become very blurry indeed.

There was a surv...

It's only a week and a bit into the summer holidays and, even though I was at work all last week, I've already achieved a state of near Nirvana  as I can, quite literally, feel the stresses of a challenging year drain away in almost direct comparison to the diminishing...