Leading through the Menopause

On Saturday, I attended a ground breaking WomenEd conference 'Leading through the Menopause.' As the morning progressed, I felt more and more convinced that something further needs to be done in schools and education to further support women experiencing the menopause and being surrounded by all these amazing women talking about their experiences and what …

Women in Leadership – IWD 2021: Choose to Challenge

In October 2014, I became a mother for the first time. At that point, I was a Head of Department and had been in role for three years. As soon as my eldest daughter was born, I knew that I had to readdress my work-life balance to ensure that I was able to spend sufficient …

How to hit the ground running in your Teacher Training Year

12 years ago, I was preparing to start my PGCE year. So much has changed in education since that point, a lot of it good. I have also been involved in PGCE programmes for the past 8 or so years and these are my thoughts on how to get your training year off to a …

How do we build a research culture in schools through professional development?

At the beginning of last academic year, we introduced Professional Development Groups (PDG) into school in order to increase and encourage teacher engagement with robust research. The plan being that all teaching staff are in a small group, most departmentally based and others grouped based upon a common interest, with a clear focus and research …

Implementing Subject Reading into foundation subjects

There has been lots of discussion recently about how schools will address the gap that has been created by COVID-19. Many teachers would already agree that the gap was already there and although it is too early to tell, that this gap will have widened over lockdown. However, it is an even more complicated picture, …

Tutor Time Reading Programme (DEAL)

In January, we introduced a weekly ERIC session during form time. This was done to primarily expose pupils to a wider range of books but also offer the opportunity to listen to an accomplished reader. We had previously had silent reading once a week during form time but feedback had been that pupils were disengaged …

My WomenED Pledge for Change

Since having my first daughter in 2014, I have experienced many emotions - love, contentment, stress, desperation, absolute joy but most regularly, guilt. Guilt about my role as a mother, guilt about my role as a wife, guilt about my role as a teacher and leader in school. This is very much self-inflicted and mainly …