In this short series of posts I am exploring the issues surrounding curriculum design. In the first post I began with the role of the senior leader in the process of shaping the school curriculum and in the second post, I collected in one place the terms currently used to…
I have been thinking for some time about how senior leaders support our subject leaders in curriculum development. For instance, I line manage Modern Foreign Languages at Huntington School and we have a Subject Leader, Cherry Bailey, with a pretty sparkling degree from Cambridge in German and Russian. I, on…
In this short series of posts I am exploring the issues surrounding curriculum design. In the first post I began with the role of the senior leader in the process of shaping the school curriculum: “So, when it comes to the curriculum, if you have chosen to be a school…
In 33 years of teaching I have taught subjects way outside my English literature specialism. I think the most challenging was attempting to teach the Level 2 GNVQ in Leisure & Tourism. I was, metaphorically, only ever one page ahead of the students in the text book. I say metaphorically,…
Last year I published An Angler's Journal, my first foray into writing about fishing. You can buy a copy on Amazon by clicking the image below. A few weeks ago The Economist magazine advertised for a writer for their "Britain" section. All you had to do…
I have just finished Professor Stanley Fish’s, How to write a sentence and how to read one. It was a delight. Whilst I was reading it, I thought of two John Steinbeck sentences which I have always admired. Now feeling sufficiently emboldened, here is my attempt to explain why…
This much I know about why we must pay our NHS staff properly. ‘Tis now Spring, and all the pleasures of it displease me; every other tree blossoms, and I wither: I grow older, and not better; my strength diminisheth, and my load grows heavier. John Donne I will begin…
I have been a teacher for 32 years, a head teacher for 17 years and, at the age of 56, this much I know about what it feels like when you are criticised about your remote teaching. We don’t mine coal. We don’t perform lifesaving surgery. We don’…