Well-Being

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 Leadership Support Toxicity Well-Being

The Blame Game

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

Everyone points fingers, especially at teachers. Meanwhile, kids (and now adults) learn that nothing is ever their fault.

Education is drowning in blame. When grades drop, teachers are blamed. When behaviour spirals, it’s pinned on staff. If there’s a mental-health crisis, guess who takes the hit. Kids watch this circus unfold and learn the one skill that seems to matter: deflect, deny, repeat.

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 Leadership Support Toxicity Well-Being

Spoon-Fed Minds

Posted on 29-04-202513-05-2025by admin

How Education Is Undermining Critical Thinking

Education was supposed to sharpen minds, not blunt them. It seems schools are little more than factories, churning out obedient workers rather than independent thinkers. Instead of setting off fires of curiosity, we smother them with compliance and conformity. It’s not just a system that’s broken — it’s a system that’s actively hostile to real thought. We’ve traded thinking for ticking, and every day we perpetuate this bullshit, we’re complicit.

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.

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.

Expectations Toxicity Well-Being

Escaping summer

Posted on 19-08-202413-05-2025by admin

Summer—a time most teachers eagerly await: the mental break, , sleeping past 6.30am, the sunshine, beach trips, and endless social activities. But for me, summer is a fucking prison sentence. While others bask in the costa del fuck you, I’m trapped in a cycle of depression and anxiety. The longer days, the pressure to entertain my kids, and the financial burden of holiday expectations all weigh heavily on my mind. Instead of enjoying a break, I’m overwhelmed, unmotivated, and consumed by a feeling of being stuck, unable to escape the monotony, and not worthy of the good things and people in my life-I’m a fucking let down. The expectation that summer should be a time of joy only amplifies my malaise, leaving me feeling even more isolated and lost and damaging family connections amplified by the fact that my wife and kids, and seemingly everyone else in the world, lives for the summer!