A reflection on leadership, process and finally feeling safe enough to be yourself. I have a confession to make. For most of my career as a school leader, I was ashamed of how I worked. Not the outcomes. The outcomes were good. The improvement plans were clear, well-written, values-driven. The policies landed. The handbooks got used. The strategies I wrote became the mechanism that turned vision into action in the schools I led. But the process. The how. That felt like a dirt

When the Government published Every Child Achieving and Thriving in February, my first reaction wasn't excitement. It was something closer to recognition. After 25 years leading SEN schools, most of what I read in that white paper isn't new. The emphasis on belonging. The understanding that inclusion is a culture, not a policy. The acknowledgement that children with SEND need more than a tick-box approach to support. These are things that good inclusive practitioners have

There’s a particular sting that comes with professional rejection. Not the big dramatic kind, but the slow, creeping kind. The polite email, the generic phrasing, or the worst of all… silence. Over recent months, I’ve had a few of those moments. Some courteous, some vague, and some so quiet I wondered if my messages had been sent by carrier pigeon. And judging by the number of posts from educators and leaders on LinkedIn recently, I’m far from alone. Rejection is something we

Why those 3am thoughts don’t make you weak; they make you human We joke about them, but we all know they’re real. The 3am thoughts. The...