I was patrolling the corridors earlier today, picking up on the usual suspects thrown out of class for not getting it right, and it struck me: why are they being removed from the same classes time and again? Is it their fault? Who’s the grown up in this equation?

It’s not the first time I’ve thought about this long and hard. Since taking up a new post as Deputy Principal earlier this year, I have been able to take a much broader view of things, and the conclusion I have drawn is that we are getting it royally wrong at the moment in our schools, and unless we do something about it we are in for a bumpy ride.

We are living on the edge of major change, with our young people utterly different from anything we have encountered before. I am not old, and have only been teaching for twelve years, and yet even I can see the change from those I taught when I first qualified. This is the first generation of what has been termed the ‘igeneration’, and we need to embrace what this means or face a curriculum that is seen by those we teach as increasingly relevant, and, well, just plain boring.

Over the coming weeks, months, probably years, I will record my thoughts as they develop, and hope that others contribute to the debate.