Now We Are Eight

Today marks 8 years since my blogging career began. A year ago I attempted to sum up the first seven years of blogging, but it feels a lot like there is more to report back on from the last year alone than from those 7 years. For a start, the total number of hits on this blog went over a million recently. As the blog used to appear in a couple of other places which wouldn’t be included in the total, the actual millionth hit could have been much earlier but was probably still this year.

There were two remarkably popular posts this year. The first, A Christmas Miracle – OFSTED Get It Right For Once, was simply an update on changes in the OFSTED handbook during the Christmas holidays and seemed to be popular mainly because it was the first place people heard the news. But it was also widely suggested that the changes reflected some of the constant campaigning over OFSTED that had been part of this blog for the previous 10 months. The other blogpost, one that still seems to get around 100 hits a day even now, was The Darkest Term: Teacher Stress and Depression which was a series of anonymous accounts of teachers’ experiences of stress and depression. Sobering reading, although I know some of those who contributed are much happier now. Its popularity says a lot about the profession.

This is the year that Michael Gove ceased to be education secretary. My comments at the time can be found here. He was a regular reader of this blog, and mentioned it in a number of speeches. Although constantly attacked for not understanding what schools or teaching were like, he had been in charge of his party’s education policy for 7 years and had built up a knowledge of the system, and the debates in education, that no other politician can come close to. He’d also made education one of the most important cabinet posts. It’s a shame to see it sink back into obscurity and for the debate to be once more dominated by those who don’t actually seem to realise what’s at issue. I mean, teacher’s oaths? Really?

This is also the year that I went public. As a result of others trying to expose me in an apparent effort to shut me up (how’d that work out for you?) and the fact that I had left my permanent job to go part-time, I decided to end my seven year run of being anonymous and made a number of public appearances. I’ve gone from being absolutely terrified of public speaking in a room of about 30, to really rather enjoying it and daring to appear before one audience that was in the hundreds. I’m particularly fond of discussions as I can get stuck into the debate and don’t have to spend hours preparing. I also like events where there are biscuits.

I’ve appeared in print (as opposed to only online) for the first time this year. Firstly, I wrote the foreword to Robert Peal’s Progressively worse: The Burden of Bad Ideas in British Schools. Then, I contributed a chapter to Rachel Jones’s Don’t change the light bulbs: A compendium of expertise from the UK s most switched-on educators (it’s for charity, buy it!).  More recently I’ve written for Academies Week, firstly about my hobby of going to education events and secondly, contributing a round up of the best education blogs of the week.

I’ve met a number of people who are big in either education or policy for the first time this year, like: Doug Lemov, James O’Shaughnessy and Maurice Glasman (none of whom actually knew who I was at the time), Liz Truss (when still education minister), David Goodhart, Jonathan Simons, Mike Cladingbowl and Sean Harford. I also met television’s Vic Goddard and Oliver from Tough Young Teachers, and came within in a heartbeat of talking to Johnny Ball. I’ve also met and socialised with various education bloggers and tweeters, particularly by organising curries, and I have been doing my bit to try to help good new bloggers find an audience, particularly through The Echo Chamber.

And probably the most exciting experiences were my two contributions to Radio 4 programmes. Firstly, I shared my opinions in an episode of The Report about OFSTED and, more surreally, I was interviewed in my front room by Reeta Chakrabarti for One to One. Fortunately the programme makers edited me into some form of coherence.

No doubt, once I’ve posted this, I’ll think of some even more exciting blog-related activities from this year and add them in the comments. But it’s been an exciting year to be a blogger and a real change from the early years of blogging which mainly consisted of people telling me I should shut up because only bad teachers think there is anything wrong with the education system or progressive teaching. Here’s to the next 8 years.