Category Archives: teaching

When I started writing Why School Doesn’t Work for Every Child in the spring of 2024, I did so out of anger and frustration. In the UK, where I live and work, 4.3 million children were living in relative poverty – the highest number on record. 3.6 million children were living in absolute poverty, 2.2Continue reading “Why School Doesn’t Work for Every Child”

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in The Yorkshire Post on 28 January 2025 in which Matt Bromley argues the SEND system isn’t working and needs urgent reform… There is growing consensus among policymakers, professionals, and parents that the SEND system is buckling under the weight of growing demand, funding pressures,Continue reading “Is the SEND system broken?”

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in The Yorkshire Post on 18 September 2024 in which Matt Bromley argues every day in school must count… The Labour government elected on 4 July acknowledged the need to transform the education system so that young people got the opportunities they deserved. In anContinue reading “Why every day in school must count”

This is the third in a 3-part series first published in SecEd Magazine. Read part 1 and part 2. So far in this series, we’ve explored the features of effective governance and governing body structures. In the final part, we will explore two aspects to governors’ evaluative role: Evaluating governance: Self-review The new governance guideContinue reading “Effective school governance: 3 Evaluation and assessment”

This is the second in a 3-part series first published in SecEd Magazine. Read part 1. In the first of these three articles on effective governance, I explained that school leaders need to develop good working relationships with governors, especially the chairs of the various governors’ committees through which important information can be fed, and theContinue reading “Effective school governance: 2 Making use of link governors”

This is the first in a 3-part series first published in SecEd Magazine. The new Department for Education governance guides, which recently replaced the governance handbook, serve as the primary source of governance information. There are two versions, one for maintained schools and one for academies (DfE, 2024). In this series, for ease and concision,Continue reading “Effective school governance: 1 Duties, processes and structures”

This is the fifth in a 5-part series first published in SecEd Magazine. Read part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, and part 4 here. This is the final instalment of my five-part series in which I am sharing my ABC of equity in education. A stands for attendance, B stands for behaviours,Continue reading “The ABC of Equity 5: C is for community”

This is the fourth in a 5-part series first published in SecEd Magazine. Read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. In this five-part series for SecEd, I’m sharing a road-map for inclusion – a way to build more equity in education so that schools might become engines for social change. PartContinue reading “The ABC of Equity 4: B is for behaviours”

This is the third in a 5-part series first published in SecEd Magazine. Read part 1 here and part 2 here. In part two of this series, I explained that disadvantaged learners are more than twice as likely to be absent from school as their non-disadvantaged peers. I also shared five factors that lead to lowerContinue reading “The ABC of Equity 3: The push and pull of school”

This is the second in a 5-part series first published in SecEd Magazine. Read part 1 here. In the first part of this five-part series on building equity in education, I set out my ABC of inclusion: The causes of educational disadvantage are complex. The way in which those causes manifest themselves in the classroom areContinue reading “The ABC of Equity 2: A is for attendance”