In ‘Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much’, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explore what happens when something important is in short supply. Their work focuses largely on time and money, but one of the broader ideas is particularly useful for leaders: attention itself is finite. School and college leaders work with finite resources across a large number of legitimate priorities. Safeguarding, attendance, behaviour, SEND, teaching, curriculum, staff development,

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir’s ‘Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much’ explores how having too little time or money can affect attention, decision-making and our ability to think beyond what feels most pressing. It has obvious relevance to poverty and financial pressure, but the idea of limited bandwidth is also useful when thinking about implementation in schools and colleges. School staff do demanding work in environments that require sustained attention an

In ‘Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much’, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explore how having too little can affect attention, decision-making, and the ability to plan ahead. Their work looks mainly at time and money, and one of the most useful ideas is that immediate pressure can take up so much mental space that other important things become harder to hold onto. There is something in that which feels very relevant to family engagement. Schools often recognise

In ‘Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much’, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explore what happens when something important is in short supply. Their work looks largely at money and time, but the principle is useful much more widely. When something is taking up a large amount of our attention, there is less mental capacity available for planning, remembering, regulating and thinking ahead. That gives us a useful way of thinking about some of the differences we see

What good looks like Inclusion is visible in the decisions leaders make every single day. It sits within teaching and learning, behaviour, attendance, staffing, curriculum, professional development, and school improvement, rather than belonging mainly to the SEND or pastoral team. Leaders and governors can describe the barriers they are trying to reduce, what they hope will change for learners, and how they will know whether their approach is helping. What we often see We oft

Seventy-four per cent of Year 8 pupils say they feel safe at school and 63% say they belong. Those answers matter. They still need context if we want to understand whether children are genuinely able to access learning, support and healthy relationships. In Growing Up in the 2020s, 74% of young people said they felt safe at school and 63% reported a sense of belonging. At the same time, only 36% said they often or always looked forward to school, 17% reported disruption in al

Seventy-one per cent of young people say they keep trying when something is difficult. The national picture includes serious challenges, and it also contains a great deal of strength worth protecting. I wonder how often we unintentionally organise a child's school experience around the things they find most difficult. We collect information about behaviour, monitor attendance, document incidents and identify needs. All of that information is important. But when we meet to dis

Around one in four young people in the DfE study met the criteria used to estimate a probable mental health disorder. Behaviour systems need to work today, while we stay alert to the experiences children are rehearsing over years. By Friday, we've reminded the same child six times to stop calling out. Each time, they've stopped. On Monday, we'll probably need to remind them again. The learner may know the expectation perfectly well. They might even be able to explain why call

Growing Up in the 2020s found less favourable teacher assessments of ability and engagement for several groups of pupils, including those receiving SEN provision and those eligible for free school meals. That should make us curious about the evidence adults gather about learners every day. A learner is chosen to represent their school at an event. They do brilliantly. An adult notices, encourages them to take on a leadership role and recommends them for another opportunity. T

The DfE describes patterns of cumulative advantage and disadvantage already visible by Year 8. That gives schools a powerful question: what can we deliberately add to a young person’s experience that widens what they can see, reach and become? One of the most important lines in Growing Up in the 2020s sits in the implications rather than the headline statistics. The researchers describe differences in mental health, attendance, school engagement, cognitive development and wid

Nearly one in five Year 8 pupils met the threshold for persistent absence. The useful question for schools is often what became difficult to access before a learner stopped coming in regularly. Some attendance problems begin while a child is still coming to school. They start arriving late, avoiding a particular lesson, spending more time in the pastoral office or struggling with transitions. Attendance might remain relatively stable for a while, even as the child's experienc

Only 31% of young people who had experienced bullying said school staff were aware of it. That figure should make us think about how easy support is to reach long before a child has to make a formal disclosure. A child starts arriving late to lessons, stops spending time with their usual friends and regularly asks to stay inside at lunchtime. There could be several explanations for those changes, but they give us reasons to be curious. If that child is experiencing bullying,

Seventeen per cent of Year 8 pupils say classroom disruption happens in all of their lessons. If disruption is this common, every adult needs a redirect they can use well, quickly and repeatedly. A teacher is explaining a task when a conversation starts on the other side of the room. Two learners turn around, someone misses the first instruction and another loses their place. The teacher intervenes, the conversation stops and the lesson continues. Nobody was removed, there wa

The latest State of the Nation report from the Centre for Young Lives paints a deeply concerning picture of childhood vulnerability in England, with more children growing up in poverty, more families experiencing housing insecurity and financial pressure, and rising demand across mental health, SEND, social care and safeguarding services. At the same time, the systems designed to support children and families are increasingly struggling to respond early enough, creating what

When I was much younger, I was in the Air Cadets and a particularly enthusiastic member of the squadron band. We went on to become national champions. Alongside the usual military numbers, it was The Circle of Life that helped earn us the top spot. I can still remember our names being called as though it happened yesterday and, nearly 30 years later, it remains one of the best moments of my life. Winning was not a complete shock because we knew we were really good and we had

Behaviour policies are often treated as operational documents: a place to set out rules, sanctions and consequences. Yet emerging analysis from the Education Policy Institute suggests that they may play a much wider role in shaping school culture, inclusion and learners’ access to education. In a study of 45 secondary schools across Hackney, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets, researchers found that schools with lower rates of exclusion, suspension and absence were more likely to inc

Picture the headteacher who spent August locking nine hundred phones into pouches. Big announcement. Assembly with a countdown. A staff briefing about a “new era” of focused, present, phone-free learning. By October she’s not looking at calmer corridors. She’s looking at a spike in isolation referrals and a duty rota that’s suddenly a lot busier than last year. If that sounds like a very specific failure, it isn’t. It’s the national average. In May, a team of researchers from

If you’re seeing more dysregulation, lower motivation, and sharper swings in mood, you’re not imagining it. Many schools are working harder than ever - strengthening relationships, tightening systems, and adding interventions - yet still finding that everyday regulation is harder to sustain. In The DOSE Effect, TJ Power offers a useful lens for understanding why. He suggests that modern life is disrupting the brain chemistry that underpins motivation, connection, stability an

If you’ve worked in schools over the last decade, you don’t need convincing that something has shifted. There is more anxiety, more dysregulation, and more conflict that seems to ignite faster and burn hotter. In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that this isn’t simply “kids these days.” Instead, it reflects a significant environmental shift in childhood that accelerated between 2010 and 2012: a move from a play-based childhood to a phone-based

Beyond Relational Practice: Why Relationships Alone Aren’t Enough: Many schools have invested heavily in relational practice, yet still find that emotional safety is uneven and behaviour remains a challenge. This isn’t because relationships don’t matter. It’s because they can’t carry the full weight on their own. Relational practice has real value. Building, repairing and strengthening relationships will always be a fundamental part of good education. But when emotional safet