Category: Education

“Open to Work”

❗️ After dedicating six years to The St Leonards Academy as Vice Principal, I have decided that it is time to look for new opportunities. 

⭐️ I am a skilled and motivated educator with 22 years experience in the classroom; most of which have been spent in positions of leadership. I hold a Masters Degree in Education and have continuously worked to develop and improve my knowledge and skills. 

🏆 As a senior leader, I consistently create impact. At The Chalfonts Community College, I lead on raising standards, moving Progress 8 from -0.23 in 2017 to +0.1 in 2019. Most recently (2025), I contributed to improved results at The St Leonards Academy. English Language moved above the national average; while other subjects made significant improvement in the percentage of Grades 9-4, including Science, Geography and Food Tech.

My main areas of strength and expertise are:

  • Educational leadership
  • Strategic thinking and problem solving
  • Professional development and coaching
  • Assessment
  • Curriculum design and innovation
  • Educational technologies

❤️ The area of educational leadership that I am most passionate about is teacher professional development and coaching. Teachers who are valued and nurtured, while being held to account, sit at the heart of successful schools. I lead and support staff with empathy, compassion and integrity; helping them to grow into highly effective teachers. I believe in the power of effective line-management based on structured feedback and coaching, to unlock potential.

🚀 The impact of this approach helped me to be a highly effective ECT Induction Lead and Professional Tutor for ITTs. I worked closely with a wide range of external providers (Ambition Institute, Teach First, University of Brighton, KMT, Teach in Kent); successfully embedded instructional coaching; championed evidence-informed practice; and contributed to significantly improved recruitment and retention of teaching staff. 

You can learn more about my experience and skills by reading my CV which is available on my blog.

🎯 I want to continue to work in education; empowering young people by supporting teachers and schools to develop and enhance the the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. Ideally, I am looking to continue as a Vice Principal/Deputy Head. However, I am also open to roles in:  

  • Teacher training and development
  • Curriculum development
  • Educational consultancy

📌 I am happy to relocate for the right school/position but would prefer to remain within reasonable distance of London. Therefore, I am open to roles in:

  • Berkshire
  • Buckinghamshire
  • Essex
  • Hertfordshire
  • Kent
  • London (City/Greater)
  • Oxfordshire
  • Surrey

📬 If you’re curious about me and the impact I can bring to your school/organisation, or you are hiring, or know someone who is, please get in touch. I can be contacted via email or on Linkedin. 

🙏 Thank you in advance for your support!

On the value of failure…

“There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.”

~ Greene, Robert, Mastery (2012)

Or, put more figuratively…

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”

~ Capote, Truman, Self-Portrait (1972) in The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places (1974)

Morning Reading

A daily ritual that I have observed for several years now is to begin each day by reading from selected philosophical and theological texts. Last year, alongside revisiting the Stoics, I managed to give myself a grounding in Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. I supplemented these with some early Christian monasticism and the maxims of the 17th Century philosopher Baltasar Gracián.1

  1. Aurelius, Marcus: Meditations (r2)
  2. Confucius: The Analects
  3. Epictetus: Discourses and Selected Writings (r)
  4. Gracián, Baltasar: The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence
  5. Mascaro, Juan: The Dhammapada
  6. Seneca: Letters from a Stoic (r)
  7. Tzu, Lao: Tao Te Ching
  8. Walker, Brian Browne: Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu
  9. Ward, Benedicta: The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks

I have begun 2021 with fewer texts, covering a wider range of subjects and ideas. Alongside Aurelius and Seneca, I am going to re-read specific sections of the bible; take a broader look at Western philosophy3; and also read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing‘ which has been sitting unread in my Kindle Library for over a year. Not a philosophical text per se, but one that I hope will go some way to helping me achieve one of my goals for 2021.

  1. Aurelius, Marcus: Meditations (r)
  2. The Bible (NSV)
    • New Testament:
      • The Epistles of Paul
      • James’ Epistle
    • Old Testament:
      • Psalms
      • Proverbs
  3. King, Stephen: On Writing
  4. Russell, Bertrand: History of Western Philosophy
  5. Seneca: Dialogues and Essays
  1. Hat tip to Doug Belshaw for that one.[↩]
  2. (r) Indicates ‘re-reading’.[↩]
  3. I feel that I have a firm understanding of Stoicism. And from sixteen years of teaching A-Level Literature and Media Studies, a sound understanding of more modern philosophies, particularly romanticism, modernism and post-modernism. My knowledge of various religions is good and I have a reasonable grounding in Eastern philosophies and theology but there are significant gaps in my understanding of Western philosophy. I hope that Bertrand Russell’s much lauded (and criticised) book can help begin to plug those gaps.[↩]

Perhaps there is another way

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed — it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardise education, but to personalise it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”

― Robinson, Ken, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, 2009

I was very sad to learn of Sir Ken Robinson‘s passing.

His 2006 TED Talk and subsequent work had a profound effect on my educational outlook and practice; and featured significantly in my M.Ed.

Schools should be places where young people have room to breathe and grow; able to explore ideas and make mistakes; where creativity is not only encouraged but actively nurtured. Those of us at the chalkface can honour his memory by working every day to “inspire and engage the imagination and creativity of the students” we teach.

If you haven’t read ‘Out of Our Minds‘ or ‘The Element‘, now would be a good time to do so; not least given the disruption that the pandemic has wrought on schools over the past six months.

Perhaps there is another way – free from ‘one size fits all’ and ‘standardised tests’, where children are not “educated out of” creativity.

The Antithesis of Mercy

I have been relatively silent amidst the turmoil that has arisen out of the collective deep-breath forced upon us by the pandemic. Where I initially saw hope for change, it was quickly cancelled by an onslaught of rhetoric on both sides of the aisle that left no room for mercy, compassion and tolerance.

Race, gender, religion, wealth: All topics fraught with difficulty at the best of times and I have struggled to fully form the words I would use to express how I feel about any of these issues in the current climate. However, Nick Cave has come to my rescue responding to questions about ‘mercy’ and ‘cancel culture‘ on his blog…

Mercy is a value that should be at the heart of any functioning and tolerant society. Mercy ultimately acknowledges that we are all imperfect and in doing so allows us the oxygen to breathe — to feel protected within a society, through our mutual fallibility. Without mercy a society loses its soul, and devours itself…

As far as I can see, cancel culture is mercy’s antithesis. Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption. It has become quite literally, bad religion run amuck.

And there it is…

We cannot and should not deny our history, nor should we try to remove it as if it never happened. If society is to be equal, we must work openly to build a wider more honest narrative about our histories – good or bad. We must ensure that education provides the opportunity for people of all cultures and backgrounds to learn and debate ideas free from persecution.

But if we seek to simply cancel out the pieces of our past that we are angry about or not proud of, we will replace one biased view of the world with another. You can only redeem yourself when you are able to acknowledge your mistakes. As humans, we are more likely to do that, in a society that is open and merciful.

—

N.B. None of this is to say that I don’t appreciate the deeply held anger felt by so many people due to the way their gender, race, religion, sexual preference, et al, has been and continues to be treated. The struggle is real. However, we must strive to be better than those who came before us and not allow our baser instincts to drive our actions and decisions as we seek to make society a more fair and equal place for generations to come.