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Somebody was sick all over a wedding guest book, and by the end of the night half the room was convinced it was Dylan. There were three witnesses. It made no difference. That is how this Q&A episode opens, before the questions start landing. 🎯 Trigger Dylan in the shortest possible time An anonymous listener sets Hayden a challenge. The broken oven, the door handle nobody has fixed, the state of the garden. Dylan takes all of it in good humour until one specific accusation lands, and it is not the one you would expect. 👶 Is leadership compatible with having young children? Following on from the tongue in cheek advice to just quit, a listener asks whether Dylan actually means it. He does, mostly. The answer goes deep on cognitive load at home, why a job designed around a single income household in the 1960s still fills every hour of the day, and why that quietly shapes who feels able to step into leadership. Anyone weighing up a TLR while their child is still a toddler will want to h…

Dylan spent half a wedding being blamed for something he definitely did not do, and there were witnesses. It is a strong opening to a Q&A that gets serious surprisingly fast. A listener kicks things off by challenging Hayden to trigger Dylan in the shortest possible time. The broken oven, the door handle, the garden. Only one line actually lands. Then the big one. Is school leadership genuinely incompatible with having young children? Dylan makes the case that the job was built around a household model that stopped existing sixty years ago, and explains why that shows up in exactly who ends up applying for leadership roles. An English lead asks whether English is a bigger subject to lead than maths, and whether the TLR should say so. Lucy wants to know if her PPA actually hits ten per cent, and the maths is worth doing on your own timetable. Harrison asks about Forest School, which turns into something much bigger about school refusers and what school is even for. And James, new…

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app Bridget Phillipson is out, Lucy Powell is in, and if you are anything like most teachers, you know the name and very little else. So this episode is the crash course on the woman now running education in England, and an honest attempt to work out whether any of it will actually change anything. 📋 Who Lucy Powell actually is Born in Moss Side, state educated the whole way, MP for Manchester Central since a 2012 by election. She got into Oxford to read chemistry, lasted a year and left, having spoken since about feeling like a fish out of water as a northern state school girl doing science at Oxbridge. Dylan explains why that detail matters more than it looks. 👩‍🏫 The "her mum was a headteacher" argument It is everywhere online, and Dylan pushes back on it hard. Hayden makes the case for empathy and lived proximity to the job. They do not entirely agree, and the disagreement is the good bit. 🎓 …

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app Seven sessions to get a full Year 6 production from nothing to stage ready, because leadership had ruled that English and maths continue every single day regardless. The team knew it would not be enough. Hayden, who has run these productions for years, explains exactly why something has to give, and why pretending otherwise helps nobody. 🎭 The Year 6 production, properly unpacked Izzy asked what it is really like, how much work goes in, and whether other subjects survive. The answer involves lap books, project based afternoons, and a genuinely useful model for keeping ninety plus children learning while a handful rehearse. Hayden also explains why rigid English and maths sequences fall apart when children are constantly in and out of the room. 😅 The bit nobody puts in the newsletter Someone plans the entire show at home, night after night, choreographing a hundred children scene by scene. Hayde…

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app A second year teacher writes in with a question most of us have asked at some point. When do you actually start to manage everything you have to do in a day? Dylan's answer begins with some bad news, and it sets the tone for an episode about workload, pay and what teaching is genuinely worth. ⏰ When does the workload become manageable? Dylan and Hayden pull apart the difference between getting more efficient at the job and simply deciding to stop doing things. Getting quicker at your slides and your marking helps, but the real shift comes from something harder. There is also a piece of advice from an old assistant head about people who want things immediately that a lot of you are going to want to write down. 📕 The three things Dylan would do as a head teacher A one in one out policy on workload, so nothing gets added unless something comes off. And then the big one, a school with no written …

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app A second year teacher writes in wanting to know when everything you have to do in a day finally becomes manageable. Dylan opens with some news she probably did not want to hear, and then turns it into something genuinely useful about the difference between getting faster at your job and quietly deciding what is no longer worth doing at all. That leads into what Dylan would actually bring in if he were a head teacher, including a one in one out rule on workload and a school with no written marking policy whatsoever. Hayden puts the head teacher's real fear straight back to him. If nothing is written in the books, how do you know any of it is happening? Then the big one, and the one Dylan gets most fired up about. Is it fair that ECTs get paid thousands less for a job that looks almost identical? Dylan thinks the entire pay scale is built on the wrong idea, and he has a full replacement in min…

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app A fully grown adult bellowing at a room of seven-year-olds. Dylan finds the whole idea a bit odd, and across his career the feedback he got most was how calm he was. So this one opens on a meaty three-part question: under what circumstances would you raise your voice, how serious does it have to be, and does it change from child to child or setting to setting? Dylan and Hayden separate proper shouting from simply controlling your voice, make the case for going quieter to win real attention, and keep coming back to the advice that shaped both of them, reserve the shout. Dylan also tells the story of the one time he genuinely lost it, defending a child who was being bullied, and why he'd want to handle it more calmly if he had it again. It turns into a wider chat on parenting too: holding the line, never making empty threats, and the underrated skill of picking your battles instead of fighting twel…

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app You've just been handed your new class, and the teacher passing them over tells you they were the most difficult group they've had in eleven years of teaching. So is that a useful heads up, or a label that's going to sit over the whole class before you've even met them? That's where Dylan and Hayden start this week, after a Father's Day McDonald's story that takes an unexpected turn. The first question comes from a year 1 teacher about to take on their fourth class, and it opens up a proper debate. Why does every class somehow become the trickiest one ever? Is it fair to brand a whole class when you hand it over, or should you just pass on the facts and let the next teacher make up their own mind? And the big one doing the rounds online, do tricky classes even exist, or is it all about the school environment? Dylan has a fairly visceral reaction to that one. Then things heat up. A listener has bee…

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app The government have announced plans for all children on free school meals to be given access to an AI tutor, which begs the question, are we already on the way to humans being replaced by robots? "Am I cut out for this?" It's a question almost every new teacher has whispered to themselves, and this week Ellie says it out loud. She moved from teaching assistant into a Year 6 class as a trainee, left very much to work it out on her own with no additional adults. The regular meetings and observations she was promised haven't happened, and she's had praise maybe twice all year. Now she's worried that if this is what teaching is, she might not be cut out for it. Dylan and Hayden take this one seriously, because the real question isn't whether Ellie is good enough. It's whether she should ever have been put in that position without support. It's a mailbag full of early career pressure this week, and a l…

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app The government have announced plans for all children on free school meals to be given access to an AI tutor, which begs the question, are we already on the way to humans being replaced by robots? "Am I cut out for this?" Ellie's message is the one that might hit hardest. She moved from TA into a Year 6 class as a trainee, was promised regular meetings and observations that never materialised, has had praise maybe twice all year, and is now quietly wondering whether she's just not built for teaching. Dylan and Hayden have a lot to say about whose fault that actually is. It's a mailbag full of early career pressure this week. One ECT is staring down phonics screening with an 86% pass rate hanging over them, daily interventions and constant mock screenings. Another has been asked to go for Year Group Leader in only their third year, before they've even changed year groups. Is that a vote of con…

🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app Twenty-five years in KS2, and Kathy says teaching now feels like a battle she's fighting every single day. Her message opens this listener mailbag episode, and it's the one a lot of you will nod along to. Since COVID she's seen a sharp rise in SEND needs, behaviour, general apathy and gaps in the basics: reading, core writing rules, maths. On a tough week, around three quarters of her class aren't equipped for year group expectations. She's made big changes, leaning into more child-led approaches to actually meet the children in front of her, but that pulls hard against a curriculum that expects something else entirely. So she puts the question straight to Dylan and Hayden. What is the future of primary? Do the big decision makers genuinely understand the situation in classrooms right now, what information are they using, and are they ever talking to experienced, grass-roots teachers at the coalfa…

So you sit a sitting Education Secretary down, ask the questions teachers actually want answered, follow up when the first answer wobbles, and then the verdict comes back from you, the listeners. This week Dylan and Hayden go through the feedback from the Bridget Phillipson episode, and it was overwhelmingly kind. Listeners said the questions were clear and fair, that the follow ups kept coming, and that the show genuinely tried to hold her to account rather than rolling out the red carpet. But there's a but. A lot of you felt she dodged. The questions were sharp, the answers were not, and plenty of listeners came away feeling the big ones never really got answered. Dylan and Hayden sit with that uncomfortable truth and ask whether that's on them, on her, or just the nature of getting a politician in the room. Honest, a little cheeky, and a proper postmortem of one of our biggest episodes yet. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!🔢 Want to boost maths fl…

So you sit a sitting Education Secretary down, ask the questions teachers actually want answered, follow up when the first answer wobbles, and then the verdict comes back from you, the listeners. This week Dylan and Hayden go through the feedback from the Bridget Phillipson episode, and it was overwhelmingly kind. Listeners said the questions were clear and fair, that the follow ups kept coming, and that the show genuinely tried to hold her to account rather than rolling out the red carpet. But there's a but. A lot of you felt she dodged. The questions were sharp, the answers were not, and plenty of listeners came away feeling the big ones never really got answered. Dylan and Hayden sit with that uncomfortable truth and ask whether that's on them, on her, or just the nature of getting a politician in the room. Honest, a little cheeky, and a proper postmortem of one of our biggest episodes yet. 🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!🔢 Want to boost …

It is not every week you get to put the questions teachers are actually asking straight to the person in charge. For our 200th episode, Dylan and Hayden are joined by the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, for a wide-ranging and honest conversation about the issues facing schools, staff and families right now. We begin with the SEND white paper, 'Every Child Achieving and Thriving', and the proposed move from Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) to the new Individual Support Plans (ISPs). We discuss what this means for children with the most complex needs, the questions being raised about legal protections and the right to appeal, and how the reforms will be funded. From there the conversation broadens out to the wider pressures on the profession: Parental leave and pay, and how provision for teachers compares to other parts of the public sector and to other countries in Europe The falling birth rate, the effect of smaller cohorts on school funding, and wheth…