This time of year, we put our 16-year-olds through a coming-of-age ritual. We make them sit in rows and write down things they have spent the last two years trying to memorise. We pit them against the clock, and prevent them from talking to each other. We tell them that this is the most important thing that they will ever do and their future life depends on it. We don’t just do this once. For most of them, we make them sit in rows and write things down between twenty and thirty separate times in the space of about six weeks. Maths, English, History, French, Biology….Again and again, they have to keep at it. Each time, we tell them how important it is and they better not have an off-day or be ill. Then we take their papers and we rank them. For some, the result will be accolades and glory. For others, failure and retakes. We know for sure that this will always be true, because these rituals that we call exams are designed to rank them. A third will always fail. There would be no top grades if we didn’t also have the bottom. It isn’t possible for them all to pass. And yet, every year, we talk as if this was not true. We pretend that it would be possible for them all to succeed, if only they and their teachers worked harder. Politicians talk about raising standards and accountability. We pretend that the problem is them not working hard enough, not an exam system designed so that hundreds of thousands fail. We blame them, not the exams. For the truth is that we have a coming-of-age ritual for our teenagers which involves a third of them being told they haven’t met the grade, that they are not good enough. We launch them into adult life telling them that they will carry the stigma of not understanding quadratic equations for ever. We put them all through intense stress, and then when some of them cave in we say they have anxiety and send them to see a therapist. And then we’re surprised when many of them say they just can’t carry on, that they don’t see the point. They don’t see potential in the future for themselves. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we do this to our teenagers. For the problem isn’t our young people. It’s not their fault that a third of them fail and many are chronically stressed. The problem is what we make them do. We’ve designed a coming-of-age system with a very high cost in human misery. Every year a new crop of teens will come of age, and despite their distress we just push them harder. We need to ask ourselves whether this is really the best we can do for our teenagers. We urgently need to think again.

Can’t believe I’m not in the England World Cup squad 😔

Funded by Israel, driven by Farage and executed by Tommy Robinson. An exercise in brainwashing, manipulation, and hate. Its an awful time to be English

every school should have a "fix-it lab" where students learn to repair their clothes, bikes and electronics. we should grow up knowing that not everything is disposable, that care and repair are part of living well on this planet.

40 odd years ago the band Heaven 17 gave the perfect response to today's election results : "WE DON'T NEED THIS FASCIST GROOVE THANG!"

Schools are making high-stakes decisions about students based on tools that don't work reliably. That's the reality of AI detection right now. What if a student sat with an idea, wrestled with it, drafted and revised and genuinely thought their way through a piece of work they were proud of. Then a tool with no understanding of their process, their thinking, or their effort returned a probability score that said otherwise. How do we mitigate that?

Oh fuck off, you pathetic bellend. Who’s ashamed of England or ashamed to be English? What the fuck is a “patriotic curriculum “? Could you give some examples? Are you going to ban Arabic numerals, 🤣? Ban foreign languages? Pretend England won the Battle of Hastings? What?

Principals, headteachers and CEO's, the oversight of AI needs to be on your desk. It is no more of an IT project than school improvement data is. Your IT team will help in their capacity, but this is something that affects all areas of school life: learning, safeguarding, SEN, vulnerable students, data analysis, systems, hiring, etc etc. Get it on your desk. Our leadership cohorts at Project Momentum are educational leaders who are taking control, supporting each other and delivering. Exciting to be working with innovative leaders across the US, Europe and South Africa. If you are interested in the next cohort, you can join the waitlist at projectmomentum.ai

Imagine going in 2 or 3 nil down at halftime in a world cup final and then having to spend 25 mins listening to coldplay. That would really cheer you up 🤷🏻‍♂️

The moon is beautiful😍🌕

Any pubs showing the nuclear war tomorrow ? Not looking for anywhere ticketed not worth it.

When historians look back at this period, and they study Trump's America, you have to assume that they won't believe it. It's unbelievable now, and we're watching it in real time. WHY is he allowed to just sit in front of global news media and make crazy shit up? Why are we allowing this insane madman, the airtime to tell the world lies? Every minute of every day. Those future historians will see these clips and read posts and articles about Trump, then they'll discount them as works of fiction. Rightly so because that's what they are. But the psychology behind this is troubling. The gravitational pull of a certified delusional person is keeping the world watching — and nobody calls it out to his face. He's started a global war to distract from his appearance in the Epstein Files. There has been ZERO planning, only a knee-jerk reaction that is resulting in human beings dying. But the broadcast and news media, let him tell the world that they are witnessing something he made up. If he had known the Strait of Hormuz would have been closed, he would not have done this. He did not predict 9/11. Mainstream media has failed the world. By allowing this insanity to be broadcast daily, without checks and balances, the US has fallen to a fascist dictator. That's not hyperbole. Wake up America. The rest of the world are finally turning on him. You guys need to step up now. End this insanity. Please.

This is genuinely extraordinary: x.com/MicloutT/status/202944… Speaking is General Sir Richard Shirreff, NATO's former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He says that the UK "should not, in any way, shape or form be involved with the Americans because they are being led by a couple of gung-ho nutters like Trump and Hegseth without a proper strategy and without serious thought about what the end state for this war is." He goes on: "Yet again we have an American president who has gone to war, a war of choice, a war of hubris frankly, without ANY [the emphasis is his] clear idea of how the war ends and without any clear strategy." He predicts that "this thing is going to go south very, very quickly." He highlights in particular just how foolish it was to kill Ayatollah Khamenei: "The idea of assassinating the Ayatollah Khamenei who was not just Iran's head of state but he was the religious symbol for Shiites worldwide. Assassinating him during the month of Ramadan is about as subtle as murdering the Pope on the steps of St Peter's in Holy Week. It will inflame the Shiite world and what you're doing by doing that is probably pushing large numbers of Iranians who might have been reconcilable, who might have thought about rising up, back into the fold of the irreconcilable."

Powerful 💯

Wasting money. Forcing schools to embrace a corporate identity when they really should be allowed to flourish. Paying crazy salaries to CEOs (or whatever their title may be), for not doing much. Expecting too much from their staff and their pupils. Providing their own CPD…

Dear Mogg 2026, is this the year I'm going to stun the pinko tofu-munching Islingtonian mashed avocado commentariati guardianistas when I storm into Reform HQ and seize the rains from Nigel, just as Julius Caesar usurped Mark Antony? Et tu, Bronte? Perseus non persil Boris

“We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.” ― Carl Sagan