Engagement

The Cult of Control

Posted on 17-04-202513-05-2025by admin

How Micro Management and Control Culture Is Killing Teaching

Micromanagement in education isn’t about standards. It’s about control. Fear. Power…and by proxy, guilt. It turns passionate, thoughtful professionals into box-ticking robots. Creativity bleeds out. Joy disappears. The system doesn’t trust the people working in it, and that distrust spreads like a virus. Some of the best minds in the profession are walking away, i’ve seen it over and over—burnt out, broken, or just too tired to fight another bullshit policy. This isn’t quality assurance. It’s a slow death.

And we’ve normalised it. We’ve allowed it to take root in meetings, policies, CPD, and appraisals. We dress it up as rigour. As “high expectations.” But it’s really a stranglehold. A tightening grip around a profession that should be fuelled by intellect, empathy and creativity—not suspicion and compliance.

Artificial Intellignece Behaviour Communication Engagement Motivation

Let People fucking Shine

Posted on 16-04-202513-05-2025by admin

Why the AI Doll trend bothers some people, the backlash against the trend, and what it reveals about insecure masculinity, performative creativity, and how our education system is still raising people to mock joy rather than understand it.

Like many, I have been interested in the recent trend where individuals use AI to generate stylised images of themselves inside action figure/toy-style packaging. These visuals often include accessories like a coffee cup, a book, or a pet—personal items symbolising aspects of identity or daily life. It’s playful, self-reflective, and widely accessible.

And of course, some people crawl out of the woodwork to shit on it. The backlash—particularly from “creative professionals” on LinkedIn—has been swift, smug, fucking tedious—the only irony being how unironically predictable it all is. The trend has been labelled unoriginal, cringe, shallow. One comment even said that choosing a cat and a coffee as your accessories reflects a “vacant life.” That kind of cold, arrogant dis doesn’t say anything profound about culture. However, it does say a hell of a lot about the person saying it.

Artificial Intellignece Curricular Concerns Engagement Innovation Leadership Technology

Teaching in the Age of Conspiracy

Posted on 14-04-202513-05-2025by admin

The Kids Are Not Alright — And We’re Pretending Everything’s Fine

The education system is not equipped to handle algorithmic influence, emotional manipulation, or online radicalisation — and yet we have never needed change more urgently.

We are failing a generation — not by accident, but arguably by choice. While students are being silently shaped, misled and manipulated by an unregulated media machine, the education system is busy patting itself on the back for hitting targets that ultimately, mean fuck all. The world outside the school is a psychological warzone of misinformation, algorithmic bias, and dopamine-driven outrage — and we respond with curriculum grids, box-ticking and ‘thought showers’. We are not preparing kids for reality. We are, unfortunately, complicit in their intellectual disarmament.

Behaviour Engagement Leadership Support

Selective Enforcement is Killing School Culture

Posted on 10-04-202509-06-2025by admin

When schools apply rules inconsistently, students stop believing in them—and social proof turns low-level defiance into the new normal

Every teacher sees it. That creeping tide of low-level defiance. Hood up. AirPods in. Pencil? Nah. Pencil Case – fuck no. Bag…as if. Homework? “Didn’t know we had any.” And what happens? Nothing. Or worse—’a smile and a shrug from some SLT douche’. You start wondering why you bother. But this isn’t about uniform policy or being a stickler for pens. It’s about something more corrosive: the slow collapse of expectations in our classrooms, aided and abetted by cowardice and convenience.

And don’t confuse this for some Daily Mail rant about trousers and haircuts. I don’t really support school uniforms as a concept (or business dress fyi). But rules are rules. If we set them, we should damn well mean them. If not, scrap them and be honest about it. Because what’s killing school culture isn’t kids being kids—it’s leadership bottling it every time a standard gets tested.

Engagement Expectations Leadership Motivation Recognition

Consistency is the Last Refuge of the Unimaginative

Posted on 24-03-202513-05-2025by admin

We’re constantly being sold the narrative that innovation will save education. New tech. New metrics. New training. The Emporer’s new fucking clothes. But what no one wants to admit is that education doesn’t need innovation—it needs some fucking humanity. The real innovation is the teacher. The character. The heavy fucking metal presence in the room. And that’s the bit academy chains are working hardest to erase. It’s paint-by-numbers, muzak, beige BS—and it’s being peddled as progress.

In the push for uniformity, teachers are being stripped of their individuality. Personality has become a ‘problem’, not a strength. It’s happening quietly, strategically, and with full corporate backing. And it’s the students who suffer—stuck in lesson after lesson delivered by unimaginative robots following identical scripts produced by “the director” in some sort of Orwellian homage.

This is not a teaching model. It’s an act of cultural vandalism, sanitising schools of the very people who make them work.

Communication Curiculum Engagement Leadership

Assembly Apathy

Posted on 28-03-202419-04-2025by admin

The Monotonous Rituals of the Post Holder with Too Many Jobs!

In the endless procession of educational routines, there is one in particular that makes both students and teachers wish for assisted death: School assemblies. Indeed, these obligatory gatherings are lacklustre rituals, overseen by disengaged presenters with the delivery skills of a stale digestive and who are about as inspirational as week-old, roadkill. To them, assemblies are merely a task to check off their list. But this isn’t a rant about the mundane; it’s a desperate plea for change because honestly, as Frasier Crane once said: “I’d rather watch a loved one autopsied”.

Behaviour Engagement Expectations Toxicity Well-Being Workload

The Grade Alchemist

Posted on 21-03-202418-04-2025by admin

Turning Water into Wine

At this time of year, teachers often find themselves in a modern-day parable akin to Jesus with his baguette and tin of Aldi sardines. Just as Jesus performed a miracle to feed the masses, teachers are expected to perform similarly, magically elevating students’ grades to meet the student’s target. Yet, behind this show of divine intervention lies the devil: the guilt-laden question that pursues teachers – “What can we do to get their grade up?” NEWSFLASH: if you have ever said this phrase, then 1. you are a fucking dick and 2. you are part of the fucking problem within education.

Assessment Engagement Policies Time Management Well-Being Workload

The Mock Mockery

Posted on 18-03-202419-04-2025by admin

Ritual insanity

There are so many challenges facing education (urghhh), but this one comes to fuck me over at the same time every year: the cultish ritual of marking mock exams. As teachers, we find ourselves trapped in a cycle of wasted hours, futile efforts, and little to no benefit for our students. It’s an absolute absurdity and honestly, this divine convergence gives me about as much sense of clarity as an angry agnostic at a scientology conference.

Communication Engagement Expectations Leadership Policies Workload

Branding vs. Substance

Posted on 29-02-202419-04-2025by admin

How Branding Eclipses Educational Integrity

The cry of ‘Just do it’ echoes from SLT as they fuel a frustrating trend, but are schools prioritising branding over substance? Schools, especially academies, are eager to establish a unique identity, often relying on shit slogans and bullshit-branded policies, and insisting on brand recognition. But news flash: brand recognition is earned, not imposed. And, beneath the surface lies a significant problem—a gap between branding efforts and the actual educational value they claim to offer.

Behaviour Communication Curiculum Engagement Leadership Motivation

Pen to Politeness

Posted on 15-02-202418-04-2025by admin

Basics in Decline

Step into a modern-day classroom and you might be forgiven for thinking you’ve wandered onto the set of a Kafkaesque sitcom: students, chauffeured to school like VIPs, lounging in their seats with an air of entitlement. But the laughter fades when you realise the punchline—their desks are barren, devoid of the most basic tools for learning. Pens? Pencils? F**k that! Welcome to the paradox of education in the 21st century, where chauffeur-driven arrivals collide with a distinct absence of independence and initiative. It’s a scene that’s both farcical and foreboding, underscoring a troubling trend in our schools.