When I was much younger, I was in the Air Cadets and a particularly enthusiastic member of the squadron band. We went on to become national champions. Alongside the usual military numbers, it was The Circle of Life that helped earn us the top spot. I can still remember our names being called as though it happened yesterday and, nearly 30 years later, it remains one of the best moments of my life. Winning was not a complete shock because we knew we were really good and we had

Behaviour policies are often treated as operational documents: a place to set out rules, sanctions and consequences. Yet emerging analysis from the Education Policy Institute suggests that they may play a much wider role in shaping school culture, inclusion and learners’ access to education. In a study of 45 secondary schools across Hackney, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets, researchers found that schools with lower rates of exclusion, suspension and absence were more likely to inc

Picture the headteacher who spent August locking nine hundred phones into pouches. Big announcement. Assembly with a countdown. A staff briefing about a “new era” of focused, present, phone-free learning. By October she’s not looking at calmer corridors. She’s looking at a spike in isolation referrals and a duty rota that’s suddenly a lot busier than last year. If that sounds like a very specific failure, it isn’t. It’s the national average. In May, a team of researchers from

At Navigate, a key principle for us is not adding to the noise, but coming alongside to create moments of clarity so that ultimately all children can experience emotional safety. There is real alignment with our work and the national call for children to experience a sense of belonging. We have created a tool to measure belonging in your setting or school, to help establish a baseline and enable you to chart a course to build on what you are already doing to foster a sense o

“You set the tone, Carter” Dr Mark Greene, ER, Season 8, Episode 18 ER is a series I return to for that feeling of familiarity, comfort and nostalgia. I grew up with the characters; watched Dr Carter fail and learn, grieved the death of Dr Greene as if I knew him, (I did, he just happened to be fictional) and saw Abby Lockhart become the doctor she so deserved to be after a series of struggles. The popularity of The Pitt (equally brilliant and incredibly gripping) has reminde

If you’re seeing more dysregulation, lower motivation, and sharper swings in mood, you’re not imagining it. Many schools are working harder than ever - strengthening relationships, tightening systems, and adding interventions - yet still finding that everyday regulation is harder to sustain. In The DOSE Effect, TJ Power offers a useful lens for understanding why. He suggests that modern life is disrupting the brain chemistry that underpins motivation, connection, stability an

If you’ve worked in schools over the last decade, you don’t need convincing that something has shifted. There is more anxiety, more dysregulation, and more conflict that seems to ignite faster and burn hotter. In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that this isn’t simply “kids these days.” Instead, it reflects a significant environmental shift in childhood that accelerated between 2010 and 2012: a move from a play-based childhood to a phone-based

Beyond Relational Practice: Why Relationships Alone Aren’t Enough: Many schools have invested heavily in relational practice, yet still find that emotional safety is uneven and behaviour remains a challenge. This isn’t because relationships don’t matter. It’s because they can’t carry the full weight on their own. Relational practice has real value. Building, repairing and strengthening relationships will always be a fundamental part of good education. But when emotional safet

If you work with young people, you’ve seen it: the instant pushback, the eye-roll, the refusal that seems wildly out of proportion to the request. Traditional behaviour systems often respond with tighter controls; more rules, more sanctions, more incentives. But ‘10 to 25’ by David Yeager explains why that so often backfires. Yeager’s core point is this: the biggest mistake that adults make is treating adolescents as either children who need controlling, or adults who should

Someone wrote online recently: “People say they are trauma-informed… I can say bonjour, but that doesn’t make me French.” It made me smile. It actually made me laugh. It’s painfully accurate. Education is full of borrowed phrases. Trauma-informed. Restorative. Poverty-aware. Phone-free. Evidence-led. We say the words fluently. We attend the training. We add the slide to the policy. And then we, nearly always, assume understanding has followed. The risk? Well, listening and tr

Every so often, education reaches a tipping point — a moment when the old ways stop creaking and start cracking. We may be standing at one of those moments now. For decades, SEND provision in England has operated like an architectural extension: bolted on, painted over, and structurally separate from the main building. Additional rooms. Additional personnel. Additional pathways. All well-intentioned, but too often creating a parallel universe within a single school. A univers

Change. It’s one of those words that triggers a collective groan, like “team-building exercise” or “review meeting.” Nobody really likes it. We are, by nature, creatures of habit – like Velcro to the familiar in ways we barely notice. From the morning ritual of hitting snooze to the sacred sequence of tea-making (milk last, obviously), our lives are scaffolded by patterns that bring safety. Routines are our invisible handrails - they make the world feel predictable. So when s

Have you ever walked the walk of parental shame? An unusually hectic day as a working Mum was rounded off with a distressed call from my sister who usually picked up my children from their setting. Like many of our peers, we shared the load, but on this day my sister was just not going to make it. I was new to my village and did not yet have friends to call on. So, a flurry of activity ensued to organise cover at work. A quick explanation to my understanding boss, a call to

I am fairly open about being more hot headed with my children than I would like to be. Anyone that knows me will know that I do more bribing than I would advocate for and that my youngest has less boundaries than most children double her age. But last night, I went to parents evening for my son and realised that I have been failing to practice what I preach in other areas, too. Lewis is 16 and on the verge of doing his GCSEs. People who have heard me speak will know that

Have you ever been sat in training - professional learning, CPD, workshops (pick your label) - and thought, “I’m totally lost/bored/uninterested here”? You know the scene: the slow drift of attention, doodles creeping across the page, the smell of terrible coffee in the corner. If you’re lucky, maybe a tray of stale pastries or those pointless individually wrapped biscuits. Hardly the environment where learning sticks. Time for professional learning is scarce, and the pressur

I was listening to a podcast recently when the topic of resilience was discussed. It pricked my ears. I hear a lot of talk about resilience when I’m around educators. More often than not, it’s used damningly: “Young people just don’t have resilience these days.” It’s a phrase I’ve heard countless times. Perhaps you have too. But let’s pause and really consider what resilience means. The Oxford definition is: “the ability of people or things to recover quickly after something

I live with three young children. I love them deeply, but, like all children, they can be wildly unreasonable over the smallest of things. The plate and the cup don’t match? Meltdown. Too much butter, not enough jam? Hissy fit. Having to take shoes off before socks go on? Unthinkable. At home, I shrug these moments off. I know they’re not signs of something “wrong” but simply the growing pains of childhood. My children live in an environment that is safe, predictable, and for

A report recently dropped into my inbox. This happens a lot, as I’m sure it does in yours. However, this one caught my eye. Why? ' Listening, Learning: Attendance' by Impetus draws directly on the voices of Year 10 pupils from across the attendance spectrum. Not the policymakers. Not the statisticians. The young people themselves. To me, at least, this holds more value. Their message? If schools want to re-engage them, they need to become places that care not just about atte

I need you to imagine a tablet (the paracetamol, not the iPad type). This tablet, yet undiscovered, has the ability to reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half, alcoholism by two-thirds, and suicide, IV drug use, and domestic violence by three-quarters. If such a pill existed, governments would legislate it, doctors would prescribe it, and pharmacies would run out of stock before lunchtime. The headlines would scream about the miracle cure. But here’s the kicke