Expectations

Training Day

Posted on 04-09-202504-09-2025by admin

Welcome back to the shit show.

First day back. Apparently, “we’re not where we need to be”… Fuck this! First training session. This industry is fucked! Within half an hour, the room is dead behind the eyes. Teachers go from looking ten years younger to one of the Olivia Atwood £100k+ atrocities: dead under stretched skin. Teachers are disengaged, already checking the clock. Instead of being inspired, we’re dry fucked with data, graphs, acronyms, and the same tedious obsession with results. Training isn’t training anymore; it’s a performance review in disguise, a guilt trip dressed up as “professional development.” It’s the opposite of motivating. But worst of all, the system pretends this is “support.” wtf?

Behaviour Expectations Leadership Support

Restorative Chat Bullshit

Posted on 03-07-202511-06-2025by admin

Nice words don’t work without real consequences.

Don’t belive the bullshit that every behavioural issue can be fixed with a restorative conversation. That if you sit the kid down, let them talk, and get everyone to “reflect,” things will magically improve. Spoiler alert: they don’t. Restorative practice has been diluted to the point of uselessness. It’s become a ritual of empty scripts, soft tones, and zero fucking impact. You cannot ‘chat’ your way out of a discipline crisis.

Behaviour Expectations Leadership Toxicity

The Classroom isnt a Democracy

Posted on 30-06-202511-06-2025by admin

No, students don’t get a vote.

Somewhere along the line, we started treating classrooms like town fucking halls. Rules became suggestions. Sanctions became “conversations.” Teachers were told to listen more, say less, and act like facilitators rather than leaders. And now we see the rusults: Total fucking chaos. Kids don’t need a peer, they need a boundary. A classroom is not a democracy. It’s a learning environment, and the adult is in charge. So step the fuck up and act like a fucking adult!

Expectations Leadership Policies Well-Being Workload

The Authority Illusion

Posted on 10-06-202521-05-2025by admin

The damage done when nobody dares say, “this is bollocks.”

Authority in education is broken. It’s not based on understanding, expertise, or results—it’s based on who shouts loudest and wears the right fucking Ted Baker suit. One confident dickhead at the top can derail an entire school. And because no one wants to be seen as “unprofessional”, we let it happen. We’re stuck in a system where people confuse leadership posturing with actual knowledge—and it’s costing us everything.

Curiculum Expectations Leadership Policies Well-Being Workload

Change Fatigue

Posted on 27-05-202521-05-2025by admin

Curriculum churn, course swaps, and top-down bullshit are driving talent out the door.

Change is supposed to be progress. But in schools, it’s a never-ending shitshow. A procession of poorly thought-out policies, new faces, new acronyms, and constant disruption. The ground never settles. Teachers are left picking up the pieces while trying to meet targets, keep kids learning, and cling to what’s left of their sanity: “no, no…. I’m fine…I SAID I’M FINE!!!”. The damage isn’t theoretical—it’s fucking everywhere. Burnout, confusion, high turnover, and a profession running on fumes.

Engagement Expectations Leadership Policies Toxicity Well-Being Workload

The Illusion of Strategy

Posted on 20-05-202513-05-2025by admin

The Endless Cycle of Incomplete Ideas and Social Media Echo Chambers

Leadership is addicted to fads. Not thoughtful, evidence-based reform—just whatever half-baked buzzword happens to be trending. They pull shallow ideas from books they barely read, twist them into top-down mandates, and dump them on staff like scripture. No debate. No doubt. No clue. The result is confused classrooms, fractured staffrooms, and a profession that’s running on fumes while leadership cosplays as innovators.

Engagement Expectations Leadership Policies Well-Being Workload

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.

Assessment Expectations Leadership Policies Time Management Toxicity Well-Being Workload

Why Teachers Are Making It Up

Posted on 03-04-202513-05-2025by admin

Taskmasking and the Collapse of Trust

We are not okay. But we’ve been trained to act like we are (Toxic Resilience). Teachers everywhere are cracking under the pressure, papering over the cracks with a new form of quiet self-harm: taskmasking. Take your impossible workload, cut it into 50 meaningless micro-tasks, tick them off like a good little worker—and no one above notices you’re drowning.

This isn’t resilience. This is bullshit.

Schools are collapsing under the weight of BS bureaucracy, and instead of support, we get scrutiny. Instead of time, we get tasks. No wonder people are quitting. But for those of us still here? We’re keeping the lie alive. We’re breaking ourselves to keep up appearances. And the system, the MATs, the CEOs, fucking love it.

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.

Expectations Leadership Time Management Toxicity Well-Being Workload

The Culture is Breaking Teachers

Posted on 17-02-202513-05-2025by admin

I have explored this topic before, but every year I am reminded of the mess, and every year it makes me question whether I or indeed anyone else should consider this a viable career. The mental health strain is undeniable.

Education should be about young people. Yet, in many schools, the toxic culture takes root—one where certain members of leadership dedicate every waking moment to the institution, and they expect everyone else to do the same, as Aldous Huxley said: ‘Community, Identity, Stability’. These individuals often don’t have the same responsibilities as classroom teachers, but their overcommitment becomes the standard. If you’re not staying late, taking on extra duties, or responding to emails at all hours, you’re not “dedicated enough.” The result? Guilt. Exhaustion. Burnout. This is not commitment—it’s coercion.