Love the ones you're with!

"Devote yourself to loving others,

devote yourself to your community around you,

and devote yourself to creating something 

that gives you purpose and meaning."

Morrie Schwarz

We all know and we all understand that we are facing another onslaught from our friends at OFSTED who are visiting our 'satisfactory schools' and ratcheting up the bar and rightly focusing on leadership, teaching, data, outcomes and progress. At times like this I often ask myself what are we trying to achieve together?

What is our vision for our children and young people? How do we continue to build brilliant learning, in brilliant learning places to serve brilliant learning communities? What is the trick to releasing the magic and unlocking the potential of each and every child, of each and every colleague and of every family and every community to be their brilliant best? Of course, we all understand Michael Gove's impatience with local authorities and failing schools but I have my doubts about his solutions through Academies, Free Schools and the private sector. We know the key to school improvement and the importance of the quality of what goes on in the classrooms and that everything points to the fact that teacher quality is the key to success. We need to focus on how we improve teacher quality and the quality of the whole workforce in our schools and surely the key must be to love the one’s we’ve got.