Continue to light that fire!

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

W. B. Yeats                             

If you read the new McKinsey Report, analyse the new PISA data and listen to people like Ken Robinson it is increasingly obvious that, while we have achieved great things over the last ten years, we are not doing enough to ignite and inspire our children to become brilliant little learners...

The challenge is how we do it and how we create passionate and compassionate learning places. Those of us who have seen it happen and know how to do it need to work together to share ideas and strategies and to continue to think team and to build co-operative, collaborative approaches that inspire young people to really understand what they are capable of, to dispel the nonsense about genius and to help them reach their extraordinary potential. No one can doubt that we have transformed the learning landscape through the powerful use of a collaborative school improvement approach and through using brilliant National Strategies programmes like Every Child a Reader, Every Child Counts and the Intensifying Support Programme. But most importantly what we created was a culture of excellence built on passion, persistence, self-belief and determined, focused and deliberate practice and hard work.  Throughout my life people have told me that things are impossible and more recently told me that we can't get every child to read by the time they are seven or eight; that we can't get every child can’t be a brilliant little learner by the time they leave primary school; that we can't get every young person the equivalent of 5 good GCSEs including English and maths by the time they are sixteen. I simply don't accept any of this and believe that every school can be a great school and that we can create great teams doing the extraordinary with the current people. Success doesn't come in can'ts it comes in cans. We simply need to change the culture and get people to believe; to believe in themselves and to believe in our children and young people and our colleagues. The next person who tells you it's impossible with these children, these young people, these families or these colleagues, tell them that if you believe anything is possible and that achieving the impossible is nothing!

Thank you by the way to those colleagues who have now joined as followers and friends. I have now had over 1000 hits on the blog over the last month and again over 40 today. If you regularly visit the blog please sign up to let me know you are there and want to continue to be part of a team who are passionate about learning, compassionate towards others and understand the importance of learning and coaching as well as teaching.

Keep the faith.

Chris