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27 June 2026

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Opinion

How can we encourage more teachers to step up to become headteachers?

Rising workloads, stress levels and the pressures of greater accountability are deterring aspiring leaders from applying for headship posts Would you want to be a head teacher? Like most of the heads of year, assistant heads and others that we asked recently, the answer is probably no. Of over 1000 people who completed the National […]

Teachers need the time to get out more

Excessive workloads are preventing teachers from spending time on activities that would make them better at their jobs Education is enough of a national concern that there is no shortage of organisations arranging meetings and conferences about different aspects of the subject. Being addicted to Twitter has allowed me to keep up with much of […]

Can ‘apps’ help schools communicate better?

There are encouraging signs that the new education secretary is interested in the potential of technology to improve learning outcomes. The use of technology to improve learning has been a hot topic for governments past and present. Almost four years after taking office Michael Gove opened the inaugural meeting of the Education Technology Action Group […]

Liberal Democrat Party conference preview

Each week during the political conference season we will be inviting a commentator to give their views on what education policies they wish to see announced. Party conferences are odd occasions. Remnants of a previous age, in which political mass-engagement was the norm, they are now attended by a fraction of the population and for […]

Morgan’s Priorities & No-Thunder Boles: Day One Round-Up of Conservative Conference

The prevailing view among political commentators is that education isn’t a major issue for this election. If that’s true, the Conservative ministerial team aren’t letting it show. They have a battle narrative and are willing to use it. In an event jointly hosted by teaching unions NUT and ATL, junior edu-minister Sam Gyimah showed how […]

Heading up a board is serious business

Headteacher boards, the first attempt to move power to the regions, deserve the support of school leaders eadteacher boards (HTBs) are now up and running in each of the eight new Department for Education (DfE) regions. Regional schools commissioners (RSCs) and their boards have jurisdiction only over academies because it is only academies (and, for […]

Federations should not be swept under the MAT

Multi-academy trusts are on everybody’s lips, but don’t dismiss the federation option In an era of increasing school autonomy and declining local authority capacity, the need for schools to work collaboratively is greater than ever. There are a variety of ways schools can do this, from loose partnerships to more formal arrangements involving shared governance […]

The advantages of scale

Having co-authored a new report suggesting performance would improve if the government let every primary school spin out from its local authority and join an academy chain, Annaliese Briggs explains the thinking behind her idea There is something of a perfect storm ahead for primary schools. Pupils’ performance has steadily improved, but a combination of […]