Education Sense – Details, episodes & analysis

In this week's episode, we discuss the mental health crisis affecting staff in schools and look at some of the best ways to help develop a supportive wellbeing culture in schools. David talks with Hilary Plant and John Ansell, both experts in their own fields and experienced at providing support for schools in this area.

Hilary is a local authority governor at a North London primary school. In addition to being the vice chair, link governor for SEND and inclusion and wellbeing governor, she is also a practising psychotherapist and has worked for many years in public health as a cancer nurse, researcher and senior manager.

John is an expert trainer specialising in data machine learning and data science and a leadership coach, who has worked for numerous schools and education groups on one-to-one coaching with leaders, mostly in the independent sector.

Some of the resources and websites mentioned in this episode include:

The Education Staff Wellbeing Charter can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter

On The Key, you can find a series of articles on workload and staff wellbeing, including a toolkit for line managers, You can sign up for a trial to access 3 free articles: https://schoolleaders.thekeysupport.com/staff/managing-school-staff/staff-wellbeing/

The Anna Freud Institute: https://www.annafreud.org/resources/schools-and-colleges/ten-ways-to-support-school-staff-wellbeing/

You can find John Ansell's coaching website here: https://www.johnansellcoaching.com/my-story

If you are concerned about your welfare or the welfare of someone else, please reach out to speak to a trusted friend or colleague. You can also contact the Samaritans for free at any time day or night on 116 123: https://www.samaritans.org/?nation=scotland

You can find out about the NEU (National Education Union) mental health charter here: https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/mental-health-charter

If you have any questions for the team, want to clarify anything we misunderstood or add further details to the discussion, you can email us at [email protected]

Thank you, as always, for listening and supporting this podcast.

The Rest is Education

With increasing numbers of pupils boarding, both within the UK and overseas, Ross is joined by highly experienced boarding practitioners Vicky and James Eales. The trio discuss the reasons why, despite the stereotypes, boarding is on the rise*.

*ISC Census 2023

This week, join Ross and David as they discuss what schools can and are doing to develop kind citizens.

It features an interview with Alan Marshall, David's Dad, who undertook national service in the military in the early 1950s.

The recording of this episode coincided with the 200th sovereign's parade at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst - the UK's military leadership college and whose maxim is 'Serve to lead' - as well as the launch of BBC Countryfile's 'Wild Britain' campaign, which aims to encourage one million acts of kindness towards the environment this year.

Please do email us with examples from your school: [email protected]

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is a worldwide study by the OECD intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' performance in maths, science and reading. This week, David interviews Lucy Crehan, qualified teacher, author and educational consultant. Her book Cleverlands (2016) combines educational research with an exploration of the world's top performing education systems, for which she travelled to help out in schools and live with teachers in Finland, Canada, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand and Shanghai. She has worked with governments in England, Brunei and Myanmar, and spoken about her work at conferences in nine countries across four continents. She spent a year working as part of a team advising foreign governments on education reform at Education Development Trust, and now works as an independent consultant and author.

This week, Aaron and David are joined by Isabel to discuss picture books and how they can be used to support children's learning from early childhood through school and beyond.

At just over 360 worldwide the Thinking Schools Network is growing but just what does it mean to be a Thinking School? Is it right for all schools and does an organisation need to join the network to be a 'Thinking School'? This week join David, Ross and special guest George Wienekus as they explore what it means to be a 'Thinking School'.

To kick off 2023, David and Ross interview a former colleague: New Zealander Thomas Primrose. Now the deputy head overseeing curriculum development in one of New Zealand's oldest schools, Thomas shares why it's an exciting time to be involved in education at both Hereworth and New Zealand as a whole.

For our final episode of the year, David interviews Shane Leaning, Head of Teaching Development at Nord Anglia, China. Shane is responsible for professional development at eleven bilingual schools across the region and oversees programmes such as the teacher training programme and the Becoming Bilingual course.

In this episode, Shane takes listeners through the processes and features of professional development and discusses how his team implements big changes while also allowing for individual school and teacher autonomy.

Teachers are lifelong learners. Like many professions, CPD sits at the heart of the career and is an essential aspect of personal growth and pupil impact. But what actually is effective CPD and how do schools cultivate this? Aaron, Ross and David explore this question in episode 7, looking at the current research and delving into their own (good and bad) experience of professional development to find the answers.

This week, Aaron attempts to persuade David to use the Qatar Football World Cup as a teaching opportunity. Tune in to find out whether he was successful and for some ideas as to how you could begin the conversation in your setting.