If as educators we want to have an impact on the future, then we need to have an idea of what we want that future to be, one of the key motivations for me writing Education: A Manifesto for Change was to share my own, personal aspiration for what I hope it can be; I wanted to look above the relentless pressure that we face as educators; economic and political, to look up and breathe an air not focused on efficiency but on something more optimistic.

Every child should have the opportunity to attend a school that can provide a good education, so there will always be an imperative to bring about improvement as quickly as possible. However, the pressure for this to happen rapidly can have both undesired and undersirable consequences.  We see it in schools ‘gaming’ the exam system, in pupils being ‘off-rolled’ to boost schools’ results, in schools not wanting to take pupils with SEN onto their rolls.  We also see it in the declining recruitment and retention figures.