SecEd Podcast

This episode offers practical advice and ideas for how secondary schools can support and protect the mental health of their students. NHS data shows that almost one in five students aged 7 to 16 have a probable mental disorder. Our experts discuss the most pressing issues they are seeing and offer advice for how schools can respond. We discuss creating a mentally healthy school culture, whole-school strategies, the role of the mental health lead, tips for things we can do to make a difference, building resilience after Covid, and staff CPD. We advise teachers on how to handle interactions with students who are struggling, what to say & do in moments of crisis, what to do if you have concerns, and other tips for conversations with vulnerable young people. And we discuss specific challenges including anxiety, low mood/ depression, loneliness, as well as the signs of change in pupils that may signal mental health issues.

This episode considers what effective governance looks like in the secondary school and how school leaders and governors can work together successfully and productively. We speak with three school leadership experts about: The distinction between the strategic and the operational and to what extent should governors be operational? How can we support governors who have little or no experience of schools? What makes for an effective chair and vice-chair of governors? What does an effective link governor role look like? How does governance change between individual schools and chains of schools within MATs? Which governance structures work best? What kind of information should school leaders provide to governors when and in which format?

This episode looks at leadership diversity in schools, offering a practical discussion about what diverse leadership looks like, how we can develop diverse leadership culture, and the benefits this can bring. We discuss how we "practise" diverse leadership – what should be in place to do it well and what are the crucial factors? How can we be vulnerable and admit mistakes – embracing the fear that this work can generate? What should we avoid when trying to achieve diverse leadership? We tackle the implications for recruitment processes, considering dos and don'ts. How do we create an inclusive culture and avoid tokenism? How can we ensure school priorities are equitable and inclusive? We also consider useful further reading, networks, and resources. This podcast follows previous episodes on diversity in the classroom and creating a culture of diversity across the school.

In 2016, teacher and school leader Peter Radford finally quit the chalkface after burning-out and breaking down due to untenable workload and wellbeing pressures. In this episode – the second of two staff wellbeing podcasts – we hear his story and seek advice for other teachers battling poor wellbeing, high workload, and poor work/life balance. Peter talks about his own experience and how others can spot the signs before it is too late. For schools, we discuss the tenets of creating a mentally healthy working culture, including six basic psychological needs for staff. For teachers, we discuss protecting our wellbeing, including tips for new teachers, how to say no, prioritising personal time, asking for help, managing workload, and defeating the myth of outstanding. For part one, visit https://bit.ly/seced-wellbeing-staff

Tens of thousands of teachers quit every year due to poor wellbeing and work/life balance. Across two episodes, we look at how schools can support the wellbeing of teaching staff and what teachers can do to protect their wellbeing. In part one, we discuss how to create a whole-school culture of wellbeing, including mentally-healthy working environments, the pillars of psychological safety, and everyday wellbeing. We consider how line managers can support colleagues and spot problems, how schools should respond if staff are struggling, and what teachers can do – including how to say no, sleeping properly, and protecting personal time.

One in four children are persistently absent from school and new government guidance means attendance is a priority this term. In this episode, we discuss why students struggle to attend school, the barriers they face, and effective approaches/strategies to help raise attendance. We seek tips from children's commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza and the Education Endowment Foundation, discussing the findings and recommendations from two school attendance research reviews. We ask what secondary schools can do to support students who struggle to attend, including how to engage with families, with a range of practical ideas for short-term and long-term interventions.

With soaring costs and real-terms school funding cuts, balancing the books has become a huge challenge. This episode offers practical advice for effective school financial planning and management. We consider the funding situation on the ground and contemplate some worst-case scenarios for the year ahead. We discuss how we can approach the challenges we face, touching upon generating efficiencies, managing cashflow, benchmarking, financial planning metrics, costing development plans, and more. We consider how business managers can work effectively with the headteacher and governors/trustees – including offering robust challenge – and the process of setting budgets for both MATs and standalone schools.

In this episode, Alex Quigley offers tips and ideas for the explicit teaching of writing skills in the secondary classroom. Drawing on his book, Closing the Writing Gap, Alex explains how secondary teachers of all subjects can improve their students' writing skills – and why this is important. We discuss general principles, the Simple View of Writing, explicitly teaching and modelling the stages of writing, using talk and rhetoric, disciplinary literacy, teaching grammar, sentence composition, handwriting, and spelling. Alex offers us some easy exercises/techniques including tips for improving sentence construction, editing-revising-rewriting, checking work back, vocabulary, and more.

Are you ready for the new school year? This podcast offers a checklist for senior leaders in secondary schools to help you prepare for the autumn term and beyond. Our experts discuss common 'new year' tasks for school leaders as well as common problems at this time of year. We focus on the school improvement cycle and self-evaluation – what should be in place and what lies ahead for the School Improvement Plan? We talk staffing, including CPD, succession planning, induction of new staff, staffing shortfalls, and communicating priorities. We talk parental engagement, curriculum-planning, assessment, governance and meeting cycles, and finances.

At least 250,000 children and young people are living with Long Covid including an estimated 4.8% of secondary-age students. This episode looks at the implications for secondary schools and what we can do to support these students academically and pastorally. We discuss the many and varied symptoms of Long Covid and the impact they can have on learning, education, and wellbeing. We offer ideas and interventions – big and small – to address these issues and support pupils suffering from this often-debilitating illness in the classroom and beyond. The advice is relevant to anyone working with young people in schools.