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To Our CEO’s Blog
CEO’s Blog: May 2022: Letter to Year 13 revisited.
Those who’ve been reading my blogs for some time may recall that I once wrote a “letter to Year 13”. It was July 2019, and the blog can be found in the archive on the MAT’s website. Part of my reason behind writing that post at that time was that I had a “Year 13” of my own. My eldest had just completed his A Levels, and we were awaiting his results. Little did any of us know that those results would be the last externally examined outcomes that our young people have received – at either Year 13 or Year 11.
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CEO’s Blog: April 2022: “Eyes on, hands off.”
The concept of “eyes on, hands off” is straightforward enough. Our governance, not just in schools, but in hospital trusts, police and prison services, and many other public and private bodies, should be driven by effective scrutiny (“eyes on”) and yet clear delineation from the executive function (“hands off”). For “eyes on”, governors need to be knowledgeable – not only about the organisation but also the communities and stakeholders it comprises, the statutory framework within which it operates, and what its vision, ambition, strengths and weaknesses are.
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CEO’s Blog: March 2022: “How to code, and what to code.”
Viewers of regional news in the West Midlands will no doubt have seen the very recent story regarding the deployment of driverless buses to ferry passengers to-and-fro at Birmingham International Airport. The inaugural journey was the…
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CEO’s Blog: February 2022: “That’s the only thing you need to know, Mike.”
The original theme of my February Blog was planned some time. However, I have felt compelled to reflect upon the events of the last few days in the Ukraine and, together with so many others, offer my thoughts on how this can be considered by our schools.
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CEO’s Blog: January 2022: From ‘snake oil salesmen’ to ‘grifters’ – the eternal importance of due diligence.
Welcome to my January blog. It’s arguably too late to wish readers a Happy New Year, but it would be impolite not to – and I’d rather be accused of being a little tardy than rude!…
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CEO’s Blog: December 2021: “The mind’s ear.”
I was recently reading a chapter from Martin Amis’ semi-autobiographical “Inside Story”, and found a particular section entitled “the mind’s ear” fascinating. We have all heard of “the mind’s eye”, an old and much-used phase that…
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CEO’s Blog: 12th November 2021: “Flanders and Glasgow”
This week sees our news broadcasts dominated by our history and our future. Yesterday our schools and our nation fell silent in an act of remembrance for the fallen of war. With the Armistice, and the…
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CEO’s Blog: October 2021: “The marble and the sculptor.”
For this month’s blog I wanted to recount a conversation that I had recently with a headteacher, working in a school outside our Trust, as part of a performance management review process I was invited to…
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CEO’s Blog: London Marathon 2021 (Part 2): Je ne regret rien!
My regular readers will know from the trail of breadcrumbs I have left in my past two blogs whether to read on or not. This blog is the second, and concluding, part of my marathon adventure…
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CEO’s Blog: London Marathon 2021 (Part 1): Better to live with remorse than regret?
One of the highlights of summer tends to be that I can get out a little more, especially during school holidays. However, it has still tended to be essentially leisurely: the occasional glance at the watch but nothing more, accompanied by an Amazon Music playlist or an Audible audiobook, and the thought of a nice cuppa at the end.
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CEO’s Blog: September 2021: The “thief of joy”?
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day; we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.
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CEO’s Blog: August 2021: “But the light is better in here.”
Feynman attributes this in no small part to the greatest gift that the onset of The Age of Reason in the eighteenth century brought to us – the value of doubt. It is through the admission of uncertainty that we learn, we discover, we find out more and we grow.
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CEO’s Blog: “The Pale Blue Dot”
Regular readers will know that I am “late to the table” with regards to reading for pleasure, and also that I’m no scientist by any definition of the term. Yet, I enjoy reading the work of…
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CEO’s Blog: “Turn up. Work Hard. Be Nice.”
Many of you will be reading this having clicked on a link via Twitter. I don’t have a personal Twitter account but follow many colleagues who do. One such colleague tweeted recently about a large display-sized…
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CEO’s Blog: “Miles didn’t hear it as a mistake… He heard it as something that just happened: an event.”
For this blog, I want to relay a story that is well-known amongst afficionados of jazz music. I don’t claim to be amongst their number but, as with fine art, and literature “I know what I like”.
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CEO’s Blog: “You blow in one end, and move your fingers up and down the outside.”
It is probably far too late in the month to wish readers a ‘Happy New Year’, but somehow for this first blog of 2021 it would seem impolite not to, especially in the context that the closing words of my previous piece was to wish you all a good Christmas.
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CEO’s Blog: “We’re cathedral builders – and we always have been.”
It is probably far too late in the month to wish readers a ‘Happy New Year’, but somehow for this first blog of 2021 it would seem impolite not to, especially in the context that the closing words of my previous piece was to wish you all a good Christmas.
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CEO’s Blog: “The Shape of the Spoon”
As we move toward the end of the term, and the end of the calendar year, we will all be taking some time to reflect on what 2020 has meant to us. Writing in a personal capacity, as I do for these blogs, there have certainly been many lows as well as highs as I am sure you, my reader, will have experienced also.
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CEO’s Blog: “We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”
Readers of my blogs will recall that earlier in the year (March 2020) I drew my inspiration from Michael Palin’s “Pole to Pole”, a book I had chosen to read during the most restrictive phase of…
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CEO’s Blog: “If you have to tell folks ya is, ya probably ain’t!”
One of the reasons I enjoy history, and became a History teacher, was my capacity to enjoy and recall events with reasonable accuracy and ease. Thinking of a theme for my blog this month, I was…
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