What I have learned about love

Ros McMullen: Things I've learned and things I'm learning

Love is one of the four core values of LEAF Academy Trust.  It is the “L”.  When you establish a multi-academy trust it is surprisingly hard deciding what to call it and part of the process for us was discussing what we thought our academies were about.  People have often heard me say that the David Young Community Academy runs on love.  The rest of the acronym comes from Enterprise, Aspiration and Faith.

When you work in challenging circumstances there are some classic errors that are often made.  One of them is to develop the “excuse culture” and thankfully I see far less of that these days.  It is typified for me by the phrase “our type of kid”, and a key characteristic is the leader who wants to tell you why this school is so different to all the other schools in the town, bemoan the prevailing circumstances…

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#Nurture14/15

The Perfect Storm : Gove’s Teacher Shortage

Bleak…but worryingly accurate in lots of respects…

Disappointed Idealist

Something hideous this way comes. It’s a teacher shortage. Nothing new there, I hear you say. But this one is going to be  a cracker, and it’s one which has been manufactured by Gove and his fellow travellers.

All commentators appear to be in agreement that we’re already undergoing a teacher shortage. The reasons for this are manifold, but let me lay out what I see as the causes of the approaching storm. There are two aspects to this, recruitment and retention, both of which are heading in the wrong direction.

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