School exclusions: the six-year cost of permanent exclusion
Valentine’s Day is round the corner. Hearts on display boards. Friendship bracelets. A quick reminder to “be kind”. And then, in the same week, we quietly enforce school exclusions and call it “a last resort”. And the most common recorded reason is not a weapon. It is not a serious one-off incident. It is “persistent […]
From drapetomania to oppositional defiant disorder: who gets labelled “defiant”, and why?
If you are trying to make sense of a child who argues, refuses, pushes back, or explodes around adults, it is easy to locate the problem inside the child. That move has a name: deficit ideology. It treats behaviour as proof something is wrong with a young person, rather than asking what they might be […]
Pace is the enemy of equity
Most schools and organisations will tell you they want equity.They say it with conviction. They put it on a slide. They pin it to a strategy. And I/we believe them. But here is the problem. Equity is slow work in a fast system.So we reach for speed like it is a virtue. Fast lessons. Fast […]
Young people, fairness and the radical classroom
By January, lots of teachers have made it through. The timetable’s back to something like normal after the shredded chaos of December. Trips done. Mocks marked. Christmas plays a memory. That “one more” data drop finally behind you. You promised yourself it would be different this year. Then the Spring term starts and within days […]
Showing your workings out
![Crumpled paper background with scribbled maths-style symbols and equations. At the bottom, handwritten text reads “A [GOOD] TEACHER”, with “GOOD” boxed in red brackets.](https://www.class13.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Showing-your-workings-out-1024x1024.png)
There is a phrase you have no doubt heard someone say. Maybe you’ve said it about yourself or someone else: “They’re just a natural.” It’s used as a quick way to explain why one person can walk into a room and the temperature drops, why a young person who has been kicking off all day […]
Pseudoscience in the classroom: when “evidence” gets us off the hook
You have probably heard that recent surveys report teachers reshaping lessons around what they describe as “very short attention spans“. Concerns about attention spans in schools dominate staffroom conversations, blaming the ever-swiping nature of social media. It sounds reasonable. It sounds evidence based. At the same time, it does something else that is easy to […]
“Look at me when I’m talking to you”
“Look at me when I’m talking to you” You’ve probably heard it. You might have said it. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” In the #WomenEd research report on women in school leadership, a Black senior leader describes walking the corridors watching big Black boys being shouted at by bigger white men. Teachers […]
Mossbourne safeguarding review
Education is not supposed to hurt When the Mossbourne safeguarding review – the Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review into Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy landed, the first feeling in our office was relief. Relief that the patterns so many young people, families and staff have been describing for years were finally being named in an official […]
Flags don’t land on neutral ground
A London flags debate in schools piece from Pimlico Academy to today. Student: “Why are there flags everywhere?” Teacher: “We are not getting into that.” If that question lands in your classroom tomorrow, how will you meet it? On our way into the Class 13 office we have yet to see a St George’s cross […]
Let’s see schools through a different lens
Shared ground, not division Across classrooms, staffrooms, and living rooms, the people who care for and work with children are more alike than we sometimes admit. Teachers, youth workers, governors, parents — we all want young people to be safe, well, and thriving. We may disagree on the route, but the destination is the same. […]
