The Taliban have banned the construction of windows that allow women to be seen in the kitchen or courtyard of neighboring houses. This further restricts women’s freedom. Yet, the world and United Nations remains silent about Afghan women.

The Taliban’s attempts to disappear Afghan women are so extreme they sound ridiculous. What next? Ban women from rooms with doors? But these are psychopaths in the grip of a pathological hatred, and Afghan women are their hostages The United Nations is either afraid or complicit

Nothing to see here! Just the BSV hunt chasing a fox across a busy road. When? When will this fucking madness end? Every week we see scenes like this across the countryside. The ban on hunting is not working, we need action - Steve Reed MP

Word of the Day is one I keep posting at the end of the year, hoping its time will come. ‘Respair’, from the 16th century, is fresh hope, and a recovery from despair. Here’s to a few drops of respair in 2025.

Children’s. Bad. Behaviour. Is. Not. The. Fault. Of. Teachers. 😡😡

Powerful knowledge for all, allows the disadvantaged access to powerful rooms. Learning knowledge/skills requires mastery, hard work and character which strong school cultures facilitate. Hard work and deliberate practice brings success and joy. Joy is not the same thing as fun.

Yes, underachievers should do more work because that’s how you get better. Why on earth does this need explaining in 2025?! If we aim to make lessons ‘likeable’ by changing the *content*, we are confining those we purport to help to a curriculum limited to existing interests.😔

Heartened by the blanket rejection of this. If you teach things well and kids feel themselves mastering the material, they have fun. Schools are passing on the baton of our most fundamental and beautiful pursuits. Last thing we need is to cheapen that with Trendy Vicar Syndrome

Had a lot of fun today making a new Power and Conflict quotations song:

Unspeakable horror.

Actually the strongest link between school and prison according to the data is not exclusion. It’s illiteracy. So synthetic phonics, explicit vocabulary instruction and guided reading might be a better intervention line…

remember when they said a woman in power would be too emotional

For weeks, ministers and other British politicians have been trying to convince the rest of us and perhaps themselves that Trump is more normal than he is, that he cares about Ukraine and Europe more than he does and that is less inclined towards Putin than he is. Those illusions

As I argued some weeks ago, we have to listen to what Trump and Vance are telling us, as uncomfortable and even scary as it might be. open.substack.com/pub/goodalland…

I feel like there's something of the 'I don't play golf' in here for the English teachers. What a titan of a role model Zelensky is.

It’s March, a new month, which means it’s time for me to give away a class set of novels via my book shop A New Chapter - Children's Bookstore. For a chance to win, simply retweet this lil tweet.

This is incredibly important, and a huge part of our system to fix. Children with SEND need help, but what if what we’re doing is sometimes a badly-informed guess? Then we make things harder for them. SEND provision is the last bastion of unevidenced practice

NEW "...pupils who had between 95-100% attendance in Year 11 were 1.9 times more likely to achieve a Grade 5 in English and Maths GCSE compared to pupils who only attended 90-95% of the time (DfE, 2025)." assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67d2cf8f…

Stories shape who we are and who we believe we can become. Here is a short reflection on why reading must remain at the core of our mission in our schools: shorturl.at/XdyjN

The inevitable debate about the length of the summer holiday surfaces again, as it does EVERY year. It’s worth remembering: - We have one of the shortest summers in Europe/the world - Leaders dealing with exam results won’t really get much of a rest