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14 April 2026

Author: Laura McInerney

Brett Wigdortz, founder, Teach First

“I have never known what is weird and what is not,” says Brett Wigdortz, the man who founded teacher training programme Teach First 15 years ago and, as its chief executive, oversaw its meteoric rise before stepping aside this summer. Born in Asbury Park, New Jersey – Bruce Springsteen’s home town – Wigdortz’s north Atlantic […]

Dave Cobb, CEO, Oceanova Group

Dave Cobb has sold cakes to old ladies, mobile phones to wide boys and, in his more than ten years in teacher recruitment, has probably interviewed more disgruntled teachers than you’ve had hot dinners. Now he wants to use the same entrepreneurial spirit that made him a whizz DJ to revolutionise the way teachers – […]

Is the grammar school nightmare finally over?

In the delirious early hours of last Friday morning I tweeted that, finally, the nail was in the coffin for the grammar schools project. A hung parliament meant the Conservatives would have to form a coalition and that would be the end of that. By 10am I was regretting my words: as the realisation dawned […]

Hannah Wilson, headteacher, Aureus School

On a half-finished housing estate, nestled between between the A4130 and Wantage Road in Oxfordshire, builders are finishing a utopian dream of suburbia. Over 3,300 new homes are under construction, alongside retirement flats, dentists, pubs, sports parks. It’s as if town planners from the 1950s time-travelled to the present and knocked themselves out with delight. […]

Russell Hobby, outgoing general secretary, National Association of Head Teachers

Russell Hobby did a profile with The Guardian when he started at the NAHT. In it the journalist interviewing him described him as the boy most likely to have his hand up in class. Given Hobby’s determined, enthusiastic and almost universally liked temperament, it seems a bang on point. But Hobby, with all the enthusiasm […]

Much promise: Successful schools in England

Most former headteachers, by the time they leave the profession, have at least one book in them. Barnaby Lenon, a veteran school leader, clearly had more than one – and he’s decided to write them all at once. If this sounds like the book would be awful, it’s not. While there is much be said […]

How the Tories made a hash of school breakfasts

When Labour’s shadow minister for terrible live interview, Diane Abbott, made an error on national radio about the cost of police officers, she was laughed at. Not knowing your numbers is now labelled “doing an Abbott”. Well, we may need a new phrase. Last week the Conservative party sent a very clear press release stating […]

Why we all need heroes who are just like us

In the United States, two brothers are considered king of the national sport, American football. Peyton and Eli Manning have sweated, toe-to-toe, often fighting one another for 20 years. They are the only brothers to play the key position of quarterback in the Superbowl – the grand final watched by more than 100 million people. […]