The Blacksmith’s Wooden Knife: On Building a Tool I Could Believe In There is a Spanish proverb I grew up with: en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo. In the blacksmith's house, a wooden knife. The village blacksmith spends his days forging fine steel for everyone else, and eats his own dinner with a crude wooden blade. As a teacher, I often felt I was letting my own children down because  the expertise I poured into other people's children too rarely made it home for my own.

The Blacksmith’s Wooden Knife: On Building a Tool I Could Believe In

There is a Spanish proverb I grew up with: en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo. In the blacksmith's house, a wooden knife. The village blacksmith spends his days forging fine steel for everyone else, and eats his own dinner…

The Notes Between the Notes: What AI Is Actually For Angine de Poitrine is a band from Saguenay, Quebec, that has recently taken the internet by storm, and I must admit I am mildly obsessed with their music and general existence, which I find both mesmerising and refreshing in equal measure. They are two musicians, Khn and Klek de Poitrine, who perform under papier-mâché masks with improbable elongated noses, dressed head to toe in black-and-white polka dots.

The Notes Between the Notes: What AI Is Actually For

Angine de Poitrine is a band from Saguenay, Quebec, that has recently taken the internet by storm, and I must admit I am mildly obsessed with their music and general existence, which I find both mesmerising and refreshing in equal measure. They…

The Return of the Specialist: What AI Means for Teaching Expertise In almost every school I visit, there is a teacher whose classroom is the epitome of good practice: great delivery, students engaged, genuinely curious, asking questions that catch you off guard. Yet that same teacher might nevertheless be horrified when asked to update a spreadsheet or navigate the MIS in search of data. For years, we have treated this as a gap to be filled.

The Return of the Specialist: What AI Means for Teaching Expertise

In almost every school I visit, there is a teacher whose classroom is the epitome of good practice: great delivery, students engaged, genuinely curious, asking questions that catch you off guard. Yet that same teacher might…

"The priorities it gave us are spot on." Free digital maturity audit tool for school leaders. Bespoke report in under 10 mins. Why not try it? www.azimuth.org.uk/digital-stra... #digitalstrategy #SchoolLeadership

I've built a free digital strategy maturity assessment for schools that generates a personalised report around your specific context (in approx 10 mins). Do give it a go. Let me know what you think.
www.azimuth.org.uk/digital-stra...
Reposting to your network appreciated.
#digitalstrategy #SLT

Listening to the Pessimists: The AI Adoption Strategy Most Schools Get Wrong Many conversations about digital strategy in schools begin with the same questions: "what are the most innovative schools doing?" and "how do we do it too?" This seems reasonable. Benchmarking against successful implementations feels prudent, reassuring, and appropriately humble. But Rory Sutherland, the behavioural economist and advertising guru, has a counterintuitive suggestion: rather than study what your competitors do well, he argues, study what they do badly.

Listening to the Pessimists: The AI Adoption Strategy Most Schools Get Wrong

Many conversations about digital strategy in schools begin with the same questions: "what are the most innovative schools doing?" and "how do we do it too?" This seems reasonable. Benchmarking against successful…

Are you learning, or are you letting AI do the work for you? My son is sixteen. He is sitting his GCSE examinations this summer, though everything that follows applies equally to anyone staring down the barrel of A levels. And, like most students I have known at that age (including the one I was myself) he is not always entirely convinced that the adults around him know anything worth listening to when it comes to exams.

Are you learning, or are you letting AI do the work for you?

My son is sixteen. He is sitting his GCSE examinations this summer, though everything that follows applies equally to anyone staring down the barrel of A levels. And, like most students I have known at that age (including the one I was…

Student Engagement and EdTech: What Does the Evidence Actually Say? Large-scale studies on the impact of EdTech are rare in education. Large-scale international studies rarer still. So when Engaged Teaching: Engaged Learning, an empirical study of teaching, learning and student engagement across the K–12 Apple Distinguished Schools community, draws on more than 17,000 teachers across 31 countries, it deserves careful reading. The headline finding is clear: classrooms where students are creating, collaborating and actively participating report higher engagement than those where technology is used more passively, particularly in one-to-one device environments.

Student Engagement and EdTech: What Does the Evidence Actually Say?

Large-scale studies on the impact of EdTech are rare in education. Large-scale international studies rarer still. So when Engaged Teaching: Engaged Learning, an empirical study of teaching, learning and student engagement across…

Metacognition and AI in Education: Who Is Really Doing the Thinking? Last Thursday I had the pleasure of speaking at the #EducationInsights event organised by The Teaching Awards Trust at the very fancy Bloomsbury Ballroom in London. The event focused on metacognition, and I’m very grateful for the invitation and the opportunity to contribute to such a thoughtful conversation about teaching, learning, and the evolving role of AI in education. I’ve included a transcript of my talk below.

Metacognition and AI in Education: Who Is Really Doing the Thinking?

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of speaking at the #EducationInsights event organised by The Teaching Awards Trust at the very fancy Bloomsbury Ballroom in London. The event focused on metacognition, and I’m very grateful for…

Pushing Back in Leadership: When Confidence Slips into Hubris - Azimuth | Fractional Digital Strategy & Education Consultancy Why pushing back can feel right for leaders, and how humility, not defensiveness or hubris, builds trust, accountability, and better leadership cultures.

" @ahargreaves.bsky.social has warned that leadership cultures collapse not from challenge, but from emotional defensiveness that prevents moral learning. Organisations stagnate when leaders become better at explaining than understanding." @josepicardo.bsky.social www.azimuth.org.uk/pushing-back...

Pushing Back in Leadership: When Confidence Slips into Hubris When leaders are criticised by, for example, inspectors, regulators, boards, staff, or the court of public opinion, the instinct to push back and to “come out swinging” can feel not only reasonable but responsible. After all, leaders are custodians of their institutions, their people, and their reputations. When staying silent feels like abdication, pushing back can feel like courageous leadership.

Pushing Back in Leadership: When Confidence Slips into Hubris

When leaders are criticised by, for example, inspectors, regulators, boards, staff, or the court of public opinion, the instinct to push back and to “come out swinging” can feel not only reasonable but responsible. After all, leaders…

Why Blaming Screens for Cognitive Decline Misses the Point Recent testimony to the US Senate on “cognitive decline” and educational technology has reignited a familiar debate: whether screens are eroding young people’s capacity to think, and whether technology itself is inherently detrimental to learning. The clip has been widely shared on LinkedIn as a serious intervention. But I see it slightly differently: less as a definitive verdict, and more as a useful provocation, even if its conclusions, in my view, are subtantially off-target.

Why Blaming Screens for Cognitive Decline Misses the Point

Recent testimony to the US Senate on “cognitive decline” and educational technology has reignited a familiar debate: whether screens are eroding young people’s capacity to think, and whether technology itself is inherently detrimental to…

Leading Words: The Language of Leadership Leadership is often described in terms of vision, decisiveness, or character. In schools, it is experienced in a more immediate and persistent way: in language. It appears in the sentence chosen for an email sent at the end of a demanding day, in the phrase repeated across meetings until it begins to sound settled and inevitable, and in the way a concern is named, reframed, softened, or absorbed into something more manageable.

Leading Words: The Language of Leadership

Leadership is often described in terms of vision, decisiveness, or character. In schools, it is experienced in a more immediate and persistent way: in language. It appears in the sentence chosen for an email sent at the end of a demanding day, in the…

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership #culture.

When questioning is taken as resistance, or alignment is mistaken for agreement, culture takes a hit.

Healthy school cultures make space for principled disagreement.

That’s not a weakness. It’s a strength.

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #professionaljudgement & #leadership.

Fluency & polished outcomes can mask shallow understanding. In classrooms & meetings appearance can be mistaken for depth.

It’s not whether something looks complete, but whether it can withstand questioning, transfer & application.

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership.

Speed can feel reassuring. But many of the most important issues are not solved by quick responses or confident declarations.

Good leaders slow the conversation and create space for thinking before deciding.

Which questions we are giving time to?

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #culture and #behaviour.

Culture is formed in everyday moments: behaviour that goes unchallenged; unfair decisions that remain uncontested; standards that slip because addressing them is uncomfortable.

Over time, these moments become the norm, not the exception.

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership and #culture.

What looks efficient in timetables, data dashboards or decision chains can feel very different in classrooms and staffrooms.

In healthy cultures, efficiency serves learning and care. In more toxic ones, it replaces them.

Curriculum Leader for English, Salford - Tes Jobs The Lowry Academy, United Kingdom

Come and join us!

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership and #culture.

Culture is shaped in the everyday moments. How decisions are explained. How mistakes are handled. How people are treated.

Small things, done consistently, are what really matters.

Worth holding in mind.

Today’s #Thoughtlet is as much about #Pedagogy as it is about #Leadership.

We often mistake challenge for withdrawal, removing scaffolds just as thinking becomes demanding.

In strong learning cultures, it works the other way round: support increases as thinking gets harder.

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #agency.

Most professionals don’t lack motivation. They lack trust.

When professional judgement is replaced with instruction, compliance rises but agency recedes.

Trusting people to think does not lower standards, it raises them.

Worth holding in mind, I think.

Today’s #thoughtlet is about #edtech: ”Technology amplifies intent before it improves outcomes.”

Tech isn’t progressive or traditional.

It doesn’t magically turn mediocre teaching into excellent teaching.

It just turns the volume up.

Or, as Bananarama put it: it ain’t what you do…

Daily #thoughtlet. Today on #leadership

Many leaders carry this weight with good intent. But when everything flows through one person, the system slows and your team's capability diminishes.

The real work of leadership is not becoming indispensable, but making yourself less so over time.

Leeds Castle Feb 3rd Exclusive Strategy Retreat for Secondary Leaders 3-4th February 2026 | Leeds Castle, Kent You’ve been hand-selected to join senior education leaders for a unique, 2 day strategy event hosted by Albion...

Strongly recommend this leadership strategy retreat run by the good folks at Albion on 3 Feb at Leeds Castle. A thoughtful, evidence-informed space for senior leaders to reflect on digital strategy, inclusion and school improvement in a spectacular setting.
👇
www.albion.co.uk/leeds-castle...

Five Things AI Does Well And Five Things It Does Not I am now well into my second decade of leading technology implementation in schools. Much of that work has focused less on devices themselves and more on the leadership judgement required to introduce change at scale in ways that remain faithful to good teaching and learning. A familiar pattern tends to emerge when new technologies arrive. They are rarely allowed to be merely useful.

Five Things AI Does Well And Five Things It Does Not

I am now well into my second decade of leading technology implementation in schools. Much of that work has focused less on devices themselves and more on the leadership judgement required to introduce change at scale in ways that remain faithful…

Six Damaging Metaphors We Use In Schools, And How to Avoid Them Schools run on stories. I get that. I once worked with a headteacher who began assemblies by saying, “What I am about to tell you never happened, but it is true nonetheless.” He was signalling that what followed was not meant as factual reportage. His aim was to surface a moral truth and, in that sense, it was effective. In leadership development, we do something similar.

Six Damaging Metaphors We Use In Schools, And How to Avoid Them

Schools run on stories. I get that. I once worked with a headteacher who began assemblies by saying, “What I am about to tell you never happened, but it is true nonetheless.” He was signalling that what followed was not meant as…

“Intellectual history”

What students really think about artificial intelligence - SecEd What students think about artificial intelligence use in eduction and why schools and teachers must listen

What do students think about #artificialintelligence? How are young people looking at AI? How are they using it for learning? @josepicardo.bsky.social explains why banning AI in #education is simply not an option & offers 5 recommendations for #schools: buff.ly/iNd0l5a #teaching #edusky

What students really think about artificial intelligence - SecEd What students think about artificial intelligence use in eduction and why schools and teachers must listen

What do students think about #artificialintelligence? How are young people looking at AI? How are they using it for learning? @josepicardo.bsky.social explains why banning AI in #education is simply not an option & offers 5 recommendations for #schools: buff.ly/iNd0l5a #teaching #edusky