🎁 FREE GIFT: FULL ROSENSHINE CPD PACK! To celebrate 50 consecutive weeks of ⚗️DistillED, I’ve put together something quite cool… Over the past year, Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction has been one of the most requested topics from teachers and school leaders. So I’ve put together a complete, ready-to-run CPD pack to help schools explore and implement all 10 principles. The download includes: → 10 CPD PowerPoints (ready for 30–45 min sessions) → 10 strategy checklists (practical classroom actions) → 10 planning templates (put principles into action ) → Covers all 10 of Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction Everything you need to run ten focused CPD sessions — one for each principle. 👉 REPOST and comment ROSENSHINE and I’ll DM you the link. Cheers! ⏰ Available until Sunday 22 March!

Reading education blogs changed my practice, so I always want to try take the opportunity to share the love. Here are a few free blogs I've read recently that I thought were super, please share if you can! I work at a school that doesn't have merit points or rewards or anything like that, so this piece by @msrebeccabirch on intrinsic motivation really appealed to me: rebeccabirch.substack.com/p/… We are in the midst of an SEND crisis, and part of the problem is outlined by @head_teach: that some schools have astonishingly higher numbers of students with SEND than others: matthewevanseducation.substa… @joel120193 is smashing out hit after hit on his blog, and this piece on the sheer amount of things teachers have to do resonated: joel120193.substack.com/p/th… @mpershan wrote a typically scholarly, wide-ranging and sophisticated piece on implicit vs explicit learning, the memorisation of maths facts and much more. pershmail.substack.com/p/und… Next up are two posts on AI: @alex_crossman has written an excellent piece on the risks of AI to education. Our job is to get students' thinking hard, and AI's job is to get people thinking less hard. These aren't compatible, and we need to pull the brakes hard. powerfulknowledge.substack.c… Whilst not strictly about education, Gary Marcus's entry here about the security risks of OpenClaw and other weird things is vital if we are to take internet and AI security seriously. garymarcus.substack.com/p/op… Of course, I've been blogging too, and you can check out my entries here: carouselteachlearnlead.subst… As stated at the outset, please share if you can!

This angle of Mbeumo’s goal is cinema man, vintage Manchester United

I think a subtle but very real element of a teacher’s behaviour management craft is the capacity to maintain boundaries by noticing issues and communicating botheredness: a firm/kind/adult tone of voice; body language, facial expressions that say, with conviction, ‘no’, ‘that’s unacceptable’. It’s calm, deliberate, assertive. Can be warm or a bit stern or even cross if needed. But you need it, whatever the backup system is. Students should know that you’re going to be bothered about boundaries. Your personal disapproval should matter to them / it nearly always does! When kids say ‘you don’t mess with Ms Smith’ it’s because she’ll notice, she’s bothered and makes that absolutely clear - in the nicest possible way. I think this needs more explicit discussion and modelling in PD so it’s not seen as an ephemeral magic beans thing. I have met many ECTs who have this sorted already - but others need a ton of support. Sometimes it’s the noticing; sometimes it’s communicating the botheredness. It should be normal to discuss these things.

Most school leaders are not chasing perfection. They are chasing progress. Quietly. Relentlessly. Under pressure. That is why Better by Atul Gawande resonates so deeply with leadership in schools. It is not about brilliance. It is about systems, habits and the discipline of improvement. In surgery, failure costs lives. In education, it costs opportunity. The lesson is the same in both fields: Care is not enough. Systems matter. That simple truth sits at the heart of Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande. Although written through the lens of medicine, it may be one of the most quietly powerful leadership books a leader can read. Because it strips performance back to its essentials. Not vision statements. Not slogans. But habits, systems, humility and the relentless pursuit of improvement. In schools, as in surgery, we often celebrate individual excellence. The outstanding teacher. The inspirational leader. The charismatic head. Gawande dismantles this myth with precision. He shows that even the most talented professionals fail without: •Clear systems •Consistent routines •Feedback that is acted upon •A culture that allows challenge and learning The lesson is uncomfortable but necessary. Performance does not improve because people care more. It improves because systems make the right actions more likely and the wrong ones harder to repeat. One of Gawande’s central arguments is that improvement rarely comes from dramatic breakthroughs. It comes from marginal gains applied consistently. This is profoundly relevant to school leadership. Better attendance rarely comes from one assembly. Better behaviour rarely comes from one policy rewrite. Better teaching rarely comes from one INSET day. It comes from leaders who: •Clarify expectations •Remove ambiguity •Build routines that survive pressure •Accept that good intentions are not enough In Gawande’s world, checklists save lives. In ours, systems save learning time. Perhaps the most striking section of Better is Gawande’s exploration of coaching. Even elite surgeons, at the top of their profession, actively seek feedback from others who can see what they cannot. This is where leadership in schools is often tested. Senior leaders are expected to have answers. Yet the most effective leaders are those who remain open to scrutiny. The parallel is clear. Schools improve fastest when leaders: Invite challenge rather than defend practice Use evidence to refine decisions Model learning rather than certainty Leadership is not diminished by coaching. It is strengthened by it. What makes Better resonate so strongly with education is its realism. Gawande does not argue that failure can be eliminated. He argues that it can be reduced. He does not promise excellence overnight. He commits to progress, relentlessly pursued. This mirrors the reality of schools. We work in complex systems, serving diverse communities, under constant pressure. Improvement is rarely neat. But it is possible. The leaders who make the biggest difference are those who ask, repeatedly: What worked today? What did not? What one thing can we do better tomorrow? That mindset is not glamorous. It is transformative. Better is not a book about medicine. It is a book about responsibility. Responsibility to design systems that protect people. Responsibility to reflect honestly on performance. Responsibility to keep improving even when progress feels slow. For school leaders, that message could not be more relevant. Because the work is not about being flawless. It is about being better. Every day.

SIP visit recently trying to tell me that data isn’t cohort driven and that small class sizes aren’t a reason for anonomolies…

Pupil leadership team interviews yesterday. I was blown over by the love which the kids had for our school. Selecting head boy and head girl genuinely could go to any one of the 15 who applied. They were so passionate and it meant something to all of them

Parent came to me today to discuss taking their pupil off roll because they are going away for 3 weeks. This is what happened last year as advised by the school so it didn’t impact in attendance figures. No fine. Not reported to LA. They’d like this again 😳

- Creating a culture of openness and challenge - Supporting staff with behaviour - Being a constant, visible presence in and around the school 3 weeks in and these are my key principles as a new Head of School.

We have a LAC at school. It’s his last day today. He has absolutely no idea. His world is going to change this weekend and it’s heartbreaking. 💔

Loved sitting down and talking pure teaching and learning with our English SL today. Clear direction for the year with the primary focus being to develop lesson structure in whole class reading for KS2 Enjoying the ride so far

First staff meeting tonight. Focused on expectations in core subjects. Key message was to not feel pressured to evidence every lesson in books nor feel the need to take pictures of practical lessons. I still find it hard to believe that this is mandated in some schools in 2025.

Remarkable how much little comments of approval from staff mean. Wish I did that to my previous heads more before I became one.

You think you’re planned and prepared. Didn’t expect a child not enrolled to arrive today, nor did I expect to have to deal with the water board. That aside, bloody lovely first day with the pupils in.

First day back yesterday. First day as Head. Loved the buzz of conversation and the positive reaction to plans on behaviour and presentation as priorities. Great bunch as well.

I'm doing a couple of giveaways to celebrate the upcoming new school year! This first #giveaway is for my book on #behaviour. Like and retweet this post to enter (UK only). Winner picked next Saturday. Please share! Thank you. #freebie

Cleared out the heads office this morning. Did not expect to find this 😆 Definitely been in there a fair few years looking at the state of the bottle!

Lots of you have been asking about this one 👀 Our brand-new vocabulary progression document is here! This progression document provides an outline of where key mathematical vocabulary is introduced and developed in the White Rose Maths schemes of learning ⭐️ Available for EYFS to Year 6, check it out here: eu1.hubs.ly/H0mjw2V0