The Curious Incident of the Blog in the Night

I’m amazed to see that these regular columns have been running for nearly three years. The first blog I ever wrote was in June 07. It must have been three years ago because it was poking fun at OFSTED who had just been here on inspection. And now we’re waiting from them to return. I hope they don’t read my earlier jibes. That might be one entry to delete right now.

Since then there’s been a pretty constant stream of blogs, though for the last year or so I’ve been in TV review mode. For the statisticians out there, the total comes to 172, made up of 116 genuine blogs and 56 TES television columns that were blog-lite but badged up as the real thing. Each had to be 500 words in length which means I’ve devoted 28,000 words to the small screen- a sad indictment of my free time.

When asked to write blogs, I confess that I didn’t have a clue what they were. And the hawk-eyed amongst you will have realised that I still don’t, though there must be a definition somewhere. But I think we got there first and remain one of the few ‘blog-standard’ comprehensives around.

A blog is forever, not just for Christmas: looking back on the archives in their handy digital filing cabinet in the ether, the entries remind me of past highlights and the daily surprises that make running a school such a fascinating job. So I’m sure I’ll return to them in the future but as reader rather than writer. That’s unless I decide to use them as material and the starting point for some other writing. Perhaps not.

Now, as well as doing all the things that I hope help to make South Dartmoor successful, I’m also working closely with my successor, Hugh Bellamy. He and I were both at a Specialist Schools and Academies Celebration Dinner recently for schools achieving an increase in GCSE results since 2006 (pre-blog) of more than 15 percentage points. Both schools received certificates but Hugh’s school gained the Oscar of the evening for largest one year improvement in results- 57%. Wow.

And for me retirement appears to be a mirage as I prepare for a new role in September as Regional Director (SW) for the National College for Schools and Children’s Services. The College has a remit to provide leadership training for leaders and aspirant leaders in education and also now in children’s services and the role is one of three being trialled. Yes, I’ll be on trial- and may find myself returned to sender.

So the future should blog-free. And will anyone notice? In the Sherlock Holmes’s story, Silver Blaze, Holmes is mystified as to why the dog doesn’t bark in the night when you’d expect it to. Well blogs are an unexpected form of writing as well as allowing you to capture the unexpected. And that’s just what schools and the future are full of. Who would have imagined, for example, that we’d be embarking on an exciting new collaboration with Ilsington Primary School from next term? Or that our students would run a public Question Time debate, as they did last week that was so dynamic and interactive.

The curious incident of this set of blogs is that they ever came to be written and that they’ve survived so long. But now it’s time to put the night blogs to bed.