"If the safeguarding principles of professional curiosity and challenge are lost to the white noise of such a zealot-like approach, we have truly lost our way." Hackney safeguarding chair Jim Gamble lambasts DfE's school behaviour ambassador Tom Bennett. chscp.org.uk/wp-content/u...

Property porn with a difference: two children’s homes for sale, boasting an underlying profit margin of 48% (!!) despite being judged to require improvement to be good’

This story from yesterday didn't perhaps get the attention it should have. It's utterly shocking. It follows dogged reporting by the Observer (in its pre-sale era), which was repeatedly rejected by the academy federation concerned. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Calling English a 'rip-off degree' is one of the most blatant exhibitions of personal barbarism I've ever seen. You've demonstrated nothing but the poverty of your own mind.

The privilege of being straight is that you never have to look for these symbols. You don’t have to wait for someone to clock you or your partner, and wait to see how they’ll react. It is easy when you’ve had that privilege to eye-roll about symbolism and how unnecessary it feels…

Fierce letter from Headrest & Headteachers Roundtable to the committee who will vet Spielman’s nomination for a peerage. Stark reminder that they had already warned the pressure would cause a death before the tragedy of Ruth Perry’s inspection and suicide. You can download and sign.

We have written to the appointments commission jointly with @headsroundtable.bsky.social opposing the peerage nomination of Amanda Spielman. We’ve also sent a copy to No 10. You can download our letter and send it to your MP and the commission as well.

Look out for the @headrestuk.bsky.social petition to put a stop to this.

“Obscene”. “A deliberate insult to every teacher in the country.” Fury as we reveal Tories have nominated Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief when Ruth Perry killed herself after a bruising inspection, for a peerage. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Big new research shows stark link between exclusion & violence. Traced 20,000 excluded kids & matched them with 20k kids of same background, same suspensions - but never kicked out. Excluded ones twice as likely to commit serious violence within a year. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

I’m still hearing awful reports of brutal inspections, broken heads, after which Ofsted dismisses complaints. Don’t let them mark their own homework again. Will the new inspection proposals sort the big problems? Respond to the alternative consultation here now - www.surveymonkey.com/r/LQ7KG25

Brave @alicejolly.bsky.social speaks out on Oxford Uni brushing her court win on “sham” contracts under carpet. “They compared our work to security guards & cleaners, I kept thinking: ‘Yes, those people have no chance of fighting the gig economy, but we do.’” www.theguardian.com/education/20...

The tyrannical practices continue to be horrifying. @annafazack.bsky.social’s reporting continues to be unflinching and vital — what those pupils & parents mustn’t go through thinking they wouldn’t be heard and then have a journalist actually listen & show it is atrocious

Two thirds of kids at risk of exclusion have issues communicating. As do 60 per cent of young offenders. I loved visiting Rushey Green primary in Lewisham which is rewriting the story for half of their reception children who couldn’t talk when they got to school. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

‘Pupils are in fear every day’. Parents raise alarm at Essex schools taken over by Mossbourne before inquiry into allegations of emotional abuse launched. One secondary boy wet himself in front of class after toilet refused. Left in wet clothes all day. Disturbingly familiar allegations.

Excellent piece. @jonnyuttley.bsky.social telling it how it is on the big questions being drowned out by all the ranting on the schools bill. (spoiler: the big stuff isn’t about why cheap trousers may end the world.) schoolsweek.co.uk/political-po...

Last week I watched as a mum who’d just given birth appeared in court, in hospital,via a laptop, fighting to stop her baby being taken into care. 3,000 newborns were in similar care proceedings in 22-3. Mums go home alone with no support. A brutal system. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Rape Crisis says schools need better advice on how to handle sexual abuse between pupils - incl at primary school. A mum whose scared 8 yr old disclosed rape told by head it was “relationship difficulties”. “I said ‘That isn’t what this is. It’s sexual assault.’” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Lots of lovely tributes to the brilliant Tony Slattery. But I’d recommend revisiting this heartbreakingly human interview from 2019. Though I warn you it will make you cry messily. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

This made me laugh for a long time. Sound on. Just lovely.

This would amount to a massive tax cut for the highest paid people in Britain, paid for by higher taxes for low earners and big cuts to public services

So take this specific incident. Do those defending the school think this is acceptable? That it didn't happen? That the person reporting it is misremembering? Lying? Just too sensitive? I'd like to know. Not just bland "This school cares for its students & wants the best for them" (not direct quote)

never thought I’d see the day when unreason would eclipse such obvious scientific self-truths

An MVPA student told me she hopes in future “children won’t be frightened as I was”. She recalled teacher screaming in line up in her 1st week: “The boy behind me passed out. I was concerned & turned round but was shouted at to turn back. It felt so awful.” www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Acclaimed Mossbourne academy will face extraordinary safeguarding inquiry after The Observer exposed allegations of emotional harm over two decades. Over 200 parents, students, teachers, local GPs & child psychiatrists have now given testimonials about the trust. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

I’ve reported on homelessness for years and met many, many people who have found themselves in awful situations Every single one of them had more decency and integrity than this privileged plutocrat

Most heartbreaking of all, it’s the children being let down by a system that’s supposed to support them. This isn’t just unfair on them, it’s unfair on their families, their classmates and their schools. It’s totally unacceptable. We need a different plan, we need investment and we need it now.

As a headteacher, I cannot express the frustration & anger I feel witnessing the daily toll of austerity & poverty. It’s not just the child living in squalor or the parents struggling to keep the lights on- it’s also the dedicated professionals stretched to their limits, trying to do more with less.

Very much looking forward to this progressing and those who labelled us “year 5 girls” for making a fuss about it, or called @annafazack.bsky.social a liar when she shared our stories having to eat their words.

I have just spent an hour trying very hard not to get spitty & ranty back at the small man people getting spitty & ranty at me on a bad place elsewhere and turns out all I really needed was to read this guy. Who is very funny indeed. Thank you Jonathan. Ahhhh. I can now step away from the phone.

Don't hand me a basket of bread and then immediately be like "don't fill up on bread," that's super confusing and I don't need that stress in my life

Paperback books are like velveteen rabbits — there to be loved and squeezed and read and stuffed into shoulder bags and left in the sun and read again until there's nothing left but the best kind of memories

The edu system, not @annafazack.bsky.social,lacks 'balance'. It's not balanced to instil 'healthy fear' in kids to score well on government-set metrics. Messianic notions of achievement as the be all and end all are not balanced. An edu elite that enacts and promotes this is not balanced.

A teacher briefing on Y6 transition day: “We were told, if there was ever an opportunity, could we shout at the children and make them cry, so they felt frightened and intimidated ahead of starting in Sept.” These kids were 10. In a strange school. “Healthy” fear? www.theguardian.com/education/20...

🤬. A. Where was the safeguarding? B. I hope the Observer is able to continue important journalism

Love this post, thank you. The Observer is a brilliant & important paper shining a light where some don’t want one.

Excl: Govt expresses alarm as 140 parents, teachers & students speak out about “systemic” & “lasting” emotional harm at two top London academies over 2 decades. Distressing stories of “terrified” children & former students “haunted” by experience years later. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

I will be showing solidarity with my colleagues at the Guardian and Observer who are on strike for 48 hours over the sale of the Observer on Wednesday and Thursday. For more information please follow bsky.app/profile/gonu... and @NUJofficial, or visit nuj.org.uk/savetheobserver

My 9 yr old son tried on the new Christmas Dad slippers. Are they warm enough? He considers. “Not really, but women have had so many long years of sexism the least men can do is have slightly less cosy slippers Mum.” My work is done here.

As Janey Godley has her funeral, here is her roasting Michelle Mone. 😂

This former Guardian section editor is also concerned about the ‘sale’ of the Observer because of the many unanswered questions

If the usual suspects claim they’re not bait-tweeting for likes and engagement on the other platform, why has their behaviour suddenly changed here? Curious, isn’t it?

This sort of behaviour needs calling out and it’s maybe time to discuss the merits of MATs and disadvantages. Many I’ve worked with locally are transformative and v well run and lean £ vfm BUT others …… For me governance, local accountability would be a good place to start

I spoke to so many parents for this story about what many termed “psychological abuse” at this acclaimed London academy. Almost every one cried. This is trauma not belonging. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Exclusive: 30 parents speak out about teachers “screaming” at & humiliating “terrified” children, many with SEN, at top Hackney academy. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Jeremy Clarkson, who owes his fame & fortune in large part to the BBC, sneers at the brilliant @vicderbyshire.bsky.social for being ‘classic BBC’ when she uses *his own words* to describe his position.

Love Michael Sheen. Such a good human. Enough said.

Education contacts have been kind enough to message me asking what is happening at The Observer, the fabulous and very old paper I do most of my investigations for. Here is an update of where we are. First Guardian strike since 1971. pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/n...

Will always remember the child who mentioned their bed was flat … some digging made it apparent they slept on an inflatable mattress which had a puncture. They didn’t know that this was unusual. Therefore they didn’t think to tell us they had no bed.