No Surprises, Really?

This week, TES ran with Ofsted’s latest claim that their new inspection model will mean schools face “no surprises.”

“No surprises.”
From Ofsted.

That’s like Greggs announcing a fine-dining restaurant — technically true, but it still feels like a practical joke.
(Although, to be fair, there is one in Newcastle — the Greggs Champagne Bar. You can now sip bubbly while eating a sausage roll. Britain really is a land of contrast.)

But back to Ofsted — who seem to think that turning up unannounced, with clipboards and cryptic smiles, counts as a collaborative process.

Schools are told inspections should be “transparent” and “supportive.” Yet staff are still scrubbing display boards at 10pm, colour-coding seating plans, and printing off policies that were last read when Michael Gove had job security.

The “no surprises” line isn’t comfort — it’s PR.
And the only real surprise is that they think anyone’s still buying it.

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SENDCOs: Running the Marathon While Carrying a Sofa

Meanwhile, in the real world, our SENDCO — a man with the patience of a saint and the inbox of a call centre — is doing everything short of splitting atoms to keep the system afloat.

He’s juggling EHCPs, liaising with outside agencies, supporting staff, and holding the emotional weight of parents (like me) who are exhausted by the system.
His last review meeting with us was six months ago — and it took that long just to get it implemented. Not because of him, not because of the school, but because our local authority is overwhelmed and under-resourced.

We only saw movement after six months of chasing, nudging, and, let’s be honest, pestering until something finally shifted.

And this is the point, isn’t it? SENDCOs aren’t failing — they’re drowning. They’re expected to deliver miracles in a system that’s running on fumes. The talk of “investment in SEND” feels like a cruel joke when the only thing growing is the paperwork pile.

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MATs and the Myth of Efficiency

In my previous post, “Where’s All the Money Gone, Again?”, I talked about the financial black hole that is the modern Multi-Academy Trust.
Since then, nothing’s changed — except maybe the size of the CEO’s pay packet.

We’ve got trusts tightening school budgets while splashing out on new “executive leadership tiers,” “strategic consultants,” and “innovation leads.”
Headteachers are told to “do more with less,” which roughly translates to: “You’re on your own, but please be outstanding while you’re at it.”

There’s a grotesque irony to it all. You’ve got classroom staff scrabbling for glue sticks while an “executive associate director of transformation” is signing off a £250,000 salary and a LinkedIn post about “visionary leadership.”

At this point, MATs don’t resemble communities of schools — they look like start-ups with a safeguarding policy.

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SEND Reform: A Year of Waiting for Nothing

And then there’s the SEND white paper.
Remember that? The grand promise to reform the entire system?

It’s now delayed until 2026, which will mark a full year since it was first announced.
A year of waiting, while teachers, parents, and children sit in limbo.

As both a teacher and the father of an autistic little girl, it’s maddening.
Every delay means another year of families fighting through bureaucracy, another year of schools trying to make do without funding, another year of children falling through the gaps while ministers rehearse phrases like “transformational reform” in front of a mirror.

It’s not reform anymore — it’s a slow-motion shrug.

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The Weight of It All

So, in summary:
Ofsted insists there’ll be “no surprises.”
MATs keep stacking management like Jenga.
SENDCOs are being asked to do the impossible.
And the long-awaited reform? Still pending.

It’s all cloak, shadow, and delay — a masterclass in how to appear busy while standing perfectly still.

And yet, despite it all, schools keep going. Teachers keep showing up. SENDCOs keep juggling. Parents keep pushing.

We keep doing the work, even when the people above us are too busy sipping metaphorical champagne to notice the cracks.

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Because that’s the state of British education in 2025:
Some of us are serving sausage rolls and surviving on caffeine —
while others, apparently, are dining on bubbles at Greggs.

Really slowly… then all at once!

Every few months something happens that makes you think. Something that opens your eyes to something you perhaps knew was there but didn’t really pay attention to. Perhaps there was a little wet patch above the lounge “It’ll be alright, we’re coming up to winter, perhaps its just condensation”. Maybe there is a slow puncture on your tyre, you keep filling your tyres with air and you know you’ve got to change it eventually “I’ll get it sorted next week.”.

Then comes a report that opens your eyes and you realise the problem is far worse than you thought. That wet patch above the lounge is in fact a leaky pipe and the first floor has flooded without you knowing. That slow puncture is in fact something wrong with the suspension and you need to get some serious work done on your car.
The NASUWT’s Where Has All the Money Gone? is one of those.

A report that confirms what we already feel every single day: schools are struggling, not because teachers don’t care or try hard enough, but because money is being swallowed up by a system that’s become more about management, middlemen, and marketing than about children and learning.

The report highlights billions being drained from frontline education — and as someone living both in education and alongside it as a parent of a child with additional needs, I can tell you firsthand: it shows.

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The Reality Behind SEND Spending

The report’s section on SEND hit me hardest. It says private providers are charging as much as £61,500 per child per year — that’s nearly triple what state provision costs.
On paper, you’d expect that kind of money to mean gold-standard support, specialist help, and truly tailored provision.
In reality, it often doesn’t.

As a parent trying to get help for my autistic daughter, I’ve seen how exhausting and confusing the system is.
You’d think that once you have a diagnosis, the help would slot into place — support in school, professionals who understand, adaptive teaching, and genuine conversations about how she can thrive, not just survive.
But it’s not like that at all. It’s forms, assessments, waiting lists, emails to nobody, and more forms. You end up fighting the system that’s supposed to be fighting for your child.

So when I read that billions are being spent on SEND services and support contracts, I have to ask — where’s the impact? Where’s the human bit?
Because for all the talk of inclusion and “quality first teaching,” what I see is overstretched teachers doing their absolute best without the resources or training they need, and children slipping through the cracks while money slips out of the system.

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The Business of Education

Education is no longer a sector — it’s an industry.
We’ve got Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), private consultants, management firms, data contractors, HR services, outsourced payroll, behaviour intervention teams, agency teachers, and “school improvement” companies — all making tidy sums from public money that used to go directly into schools.

There’s a whole ecosystem built around education, and everyone’s feeding from it except the people actually in the classroom.
It’s fragmented, messy, and full of duplication. One MAT might be paying one company for “strategic leadership training,” while another pays for the same thing rebranded with a new logo.
Meanwhile, actual teachers are told to reuse exercise books and print double-sided to save paper.

When did education stop being about the children and start being about the contracts?

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The Cost of Keeping the Lights On

Then there’s the issue of cover.
Schools are now spending millions just to have a body in the room. Not necessarily a qualified teacher — just someone to keep the peace, supervise a worksheet, and make sure nobody throws a chair.

The NASUWT report says schools spent around £1.2 billion on supply teachers last year, with £300 million going straight to agencies.
That’s £300 million that could have been used for proper teacher recruitment, training, or retention — you know, the things that actually stop people from leaving in the first place.

We’ve reached a point where we’re paying to prop up the symptoms of a broken system rather than fixing the causes of it.

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Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Teachers

Some MATs now have four layers of management above the headteacher.
Four.
You’ve got the CEO, the deputy CEO, the regional director, the executive principal, the cluster lead, the area improvement strategist (whatever that means), and then, finally, the person who actually runs the school.

Some of these executives are earning over £250,000 a year. A few, apparently, are on more than £500,000.
Let that sink in.
The Prime Minister earns around £170,000.
So yes — we now live in a country where the leader of a group of schools can earn significantly more than the leader of the country.

And I’m sure they’ll say it’s because of the “scale of responsibility” or the “complexity of leadership.” But if the system they’re leading is underfunded, short-staffed, and leaking money, how complex can it be?

It feels less like a network of schools and more like a corporate pyramid scheme with a safeguarding policy.

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Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we stopped paying for extra layers of management and instead paid for time. Time for teachers to plan properly, to talk to students, to actually collaborate. Time for SEND teams to work with parents, not just around them.

The money’s there — it’s just being vacuumed upwards instead of poured where it matters.

And honestly, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next report revealed that a MAT CEO is earning loyalty points on the government’s moral credit card.

Because when a system meant to nurture children becomes one that rewards profit and PowerPoint slides, it’s clear that the crisis isn’t in teaching — it’s in leadership.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to email my local authority again about my daughter’s support plan.
I expect a reply around 2043.

“It’s Not a SEND Crisis – It’s an Everything Crisis”

At this point, I think we can all agree that “crisis” has lost its meaning in education.
We’ve had funding crises, recruitment crises, behaviour crises, and now, the big one — the SEND crisis.

Except it’s not really a SEND crisis, is it?
It’s an everything crisis.

It’s what happens when years of underfunding, over-promising, and “doing more with less” finally meet in one overcrowded classroom, where you’re trying to deliver “quality first teaching” to thirty-two students with five different seating plans and a dodgy projector.

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The SEND Situation: Quality First, But First We Need Quality Conditions

We’re expected to deliver adaptive teaching for every learner — to tailor, tweak, and transform lessons so that every child can access the curriculum.
That’s fine. That’s good teaching. But let’s be honest — it’s getting harder to do it properly.

We talk a lot about “quality first teaching,” but right now most of us are firefighting.
We’ve got larger class sizes than ever, dwindling support, and the growing need to cut costs on cover — which means more non-specialists parachuted into classrooms and less consistency for students who desperately need it.

Teachers want to help every child succeed. We genuinely do. But the system is working against us. We’re told that if we just try harder, or use the right buzzword in a lesson plan, everything will be fine.
Spoiler: it isn’t fine.
We’re doing our best, but the truth is, the foundations are cracked, and the cracks are widening.

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Ofsted’s New Framework: A Riddle Wrapped in Acronyms

And then there’s Ofsted.
Because when you’re already juggling chainsaws blindfolded, what you really need is a new framework.

This one, apparently, focuses on “curriculum quality,” “behaviour and attitudes,” and “personal development.”
It sounds noble. It always does. Until you read the fine print and realise that it’s basically the same expectations, repackaged with a different set of PowerPoint slides.

We’re told accountability is good — and yes, it is. But this version of accountability feels like being told to fit a one-size-fits-all hat that’s clearly three sizes too small.
Schools are unique. Communities are different.
Yet, we’re all being measured by the same ruler, regardless of context.

And the new buzzword is “coherence.” Everything must be “coherent.”
Because nothing says “improving teacher wellbeing” like staying up until 10pm trying to make your curriculum map look coherent enough to avoid a week of heart palpitations when the phone rings with “the call.”

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Teacher Retention: We Don’t Want Champagne, We Want Time

And then there’s the retention crisis.
Apparently, teachers are leaving in droves because they’re underpaid.
Sure — that’s part of it. But it’s not the full story.

You can throw all the recruitment bonuses in the world at the problem, but it won’t fix what’s really wrong.
Teachers don’t want champagne and bonuses.
We want time.
We want to do our jobs properly without drowning in admin.
We want to feel trusted to teach instead of being inspected into the ground.

It’s not about the pay rise (though, let’s not kid ourselves — it wouldn’t hurt).
It’s about being treated as professionals instead of performance data.

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Where That Leaves Us

So here we are.
In classrooms that are fuller, budgets that are tighter, and expectations that are somehow higher.
We’re tired, but we still care — and that’s the part that hurts the most.

Teachers aren’t leaving because they’ve stopped loving teaching.
They’re leaving because it’s becoming impossible to do it well in the system we’ve been handed.

Maybe one day, we’ll get a version of education that works for everyone — staff, students, and the system itself.
Until then, we’ll keep doing what teachers always do:
Making something out of nothing, laughing at the chaos, and surviving on caffeine, camaraderie, and the faint hope that someone, somewhere, might finally start listening.

Feel free to comment and let us know how you’re getting on at school – is there a crisis?

Are you ready?

GCSE results have landed, and across the country thousands of students are celebrating, commiserating, or somewhere in between. Funnily enough, plenty of teachers are doing the same thing.

I’m happy with my results this year, which makes the looming INSET day a little less stressful. You know the one: SLT pouring over headline figures, subject by subject, in front of the entire staffroom. Some colleagues shift uncomfortably in their seats, others sit quietly relieved that—for now—they’re off the hook.

And here we are, the last week of summer. Six weeks vanished in a blink and now September looms large. Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUN.

It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe. Other professions must get it, but surely not on the same scale. You look forward to the routine, but dread the workload. You feel like you’ve forgotten how to teach, as though you’re a brand-new NQT walking in on day one again. Ten Septembers in, and I still can’t manage a stoic return. It’s the ultimate Sunday night feeling—just stretched across an entire week.

Of course, once we’re back it takes approximately 9.3 minutes (I’ve scientifically tested this) before the summer is completely erased and the school mindset takes over. The sheer pace of the day smacks you in the face from minute one.

Then the kids arrive. On the most punctual day of the year, no less. Parents are clearly keen to get them out of the house after six long weeks together (if only they were that enthusiastic all year round…). The corridors fill quickly with nervous faces, shiny new uniforms, pristine stationery, and brand-new bags. Everyone—students and staff alike—is determined: this year will be different. This will be the year of organisation, no bad habits, no missed deadlines.

It feels a bit like New Year’s Eve: full of resolutions and good intentions. But like most resolutions, how long do they last? Studies suggest most are gone by the end of January, which in school terms probably translates to October half term. Personally, I tend to notice behaviour sliding after about 4–5 weeks as tiredness creeps in and standards slip a little.

At my school, serving a large number of disadvantaged young people, the summer has often been tough for them—little structure, little stability. They return on edge, needing time to settle back into routine. Our pastoral staff, absolute unsung heroes, work overtime to get them regulated so that we can actually teach.

It’s a unique, slightly surreal time of year for secondary teachers. A mix of dread, excitement, and “what on earth am I doing here again?”

So, breathe. Prepare as best you can. Accept that you won’t have it all figured out straight away, and that’s perfectly fine. And above all—remember: they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.

And if all else fails, just remember: there are only about 190 teaching days until summer… but who’s counting?