You Are the System

For every learner, the system is whoever stands in front of them. Drawing on Sir Ken Robinson and Linda Hill, we argue that grassroots change in classrooms, colleges and lecture theatres can't wait for Westminster.

Results Days Never Fail To Fail Them

Nearly half of GCSE students "fail" maths and English every single year, by design. We unpack the assessment industrial complex, why results day measures nothing real, and why teachers already know it.

Nobody Mentioned Quadratic Equations

A new Education Secretary is in post. We asked hundreds of people what they'd tell a ten year old about why school matters. Nobody said exams. Here's what that gap should actually change.

Passing the Parcel

Permanent exclusion feels decisive but rarely solves anything. Using UK exclusion data and cost analysis, we argue it just passes the problem downstream, to alternative provision and society, while the underlying need stays unaddressed.

The Year We Rearranged the Deckchairs

A year of frenzied education reform - reviews, bans, a dismantled US department - changed nothing about how children actually learn. It was tinkering, not rebuilding. Iran's crisis exposed a system that collapses without its building.

The Curriculum After Growth

The Global Justice Report challenges education's hidden growth story. Schools shape young people's sense of the future, so flourishing must mean ecological, economic and relational justice, not just individual wellbeing, mobility or competition.

OfSTED Unmasked

OfSTED has become a fear-driven regime that prioritises performative compliance over genuine learning. Its inspections warp priorities, harm wellbeing, and stifle innovation - all under the illusion of accountability. Reform is urgent and overdue.

Innovation vs. Compliance: The Education Tightrope

Innovation in education is being strangled by box-ticking and policy overload. Teachers need freedom to experiment, fail, and grow. Schools should be judged on creativity, not conformity. It's time to prioritise real learning over paperwork.

The Tail Wagging the Dog: Unmasking the Gatekeepers of Education

Education decisions are too often made by people far removed from classrooms. We need policies shaped by those who know the realities: teachers. It’s time to give educators real power and put pupils’ needs first.

Rewilding Education: From Monoculture to Thriving Rainforest

School needs to move beyond rigid uniformity and embrace a diverse, creative ecosystem. By fostering psychological safety and valuing culture over compliance, we can grow resilient learners, empowered teachers, and innovative schools that truly thrive.

Collective Illusions Might Just Be Our Biggest Enemy

We are trapped in comforting myths that stifle progress. It's time to question outdated beliefs, embrace discomfort, and turn schools into places of experimentation, curiosity, and honest reflection. Innovation starts where illusions end.

Inclusion: Stop Talking, Start Doing

Inclusion shouldn't be special or separate because it should be standard. Every learner, every space, every lesson designed for everyone. Not an add-on, not a label. Just education that works for all, by default.

The School Petri Dish: Breeding Brilliant Minds, Not Obedient Drones

Textbooks don’t start revolutions. Neither do timetables, tidy desks, or sticking to “what’s always worked”. If we want classrooms buzzing with ideas, risk, and raw creativity, we need to stop playing safe and start setting fires.

Beyond the Factory: It's Time to Rebuild Education From the Ground Up

The bell rings, the conveyor moves, and another perfectly packaged student rolls off the line, except the world they’re headed into doesn’t want factory outputs. It wants thinkers, makers, rebels. Time to bulldoze the blueprint.

Rebel Ideas: Rethinking Assessment in an Infinite Game

Still making kids handwrite essays in silence like it’s 1952? Madness. The world’s shifted, but assessment hasn’t moved an inch. It’s time to stop patching up the system and start building one that actually fits how learning works now.

Unfinished Business: The Battle for Education Reform Isn't Over

Applauding pioneers is easy. Finishing what they started takes guts. Sir Tim Brighouse cracked open the system and now it’s on us to blow it wide. We don’t need nostalgia. We need action. The next chapter’s overdue.

Your Bell Curve Is Missing the Point

Learning doesn’t end at exams, and education isn’t a checklist. The infinite game mindset challenges us to build systems that evolve, empower, and endure. As AI accelerates change, it’s never been more urgent to rethink everything.

The Problem with Playing it Safe

We’re still running schools like they’re building Model Ts, not moonshots. If the future demands creators, not copy-pasters, then it's time we stopped producing compliant answer machines and started cultivating courageous questioners. The factory model is dead - long live the ideas factory.

How Do You Eat an Elephant?

Who’s the system really serving, the learners, or the legacy? If the answer makes you uncomfortable, good. That discomfort is the birthplace of change. Let’s stop rearranging the furniture and start redesigning the house.

Learning Has Left The Building

Learning no longer lives inside the classroom. It thrives in communities, digital spaces, and everyday experiences. Education must stop trying to control it and start connecting it. The future of learning is everywhere if we let it.

The Choice is Ours

The Factory Model is Killing the Craftspeople

The Uncomfortable Truth About the Digital Divide

5 Steps to Make This Happen

The Time is Now

The Naysayers Can Get in the Bin

This Isn't Pie-in-the-Sky - It's Already Happening

What Pick 'n' Mix Education Looks Like

Imagine a World Where Education Funding Follows the Learner

The Current Buffet is Cold and the Food is Stale

Breaking Free from the Buffet

The Great Education Swindle: Why Schools Isn't Preparing Kids for Life

Is Knowledge Everything? Here's Our Honest View

When Cheating Is Ok

Why Exams Aren't Fair

Innovation by Invitation Only

The education system will be in crisis by the end of this decade