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A huge thank you to members of the Fulham Badgers team who helped out around the club last week. 🤍

A Badgers takeover! 🦡🤍 In celebration of 20 years of the Fulham Badgers, and coinciding with World Down's Syndrome Day, members of the team helped out across the club on matchday.

Ahead of World Down Syndrome Day this Saturday, we spent the day with Alex Cooper on shift at the Performance Centre. A much-valued member of the team, Alex is a shining example of the fantastic work supported by the @DSAInfo WorkFit Programme. #TogetherAgainstLoneliness #WDSD26 #WorldDownSyndromeDay

Ahead of World Down Syndrome Day tomorrow, Marco's pre-match interview was conducted by Tom from our Fulham Badgers team. 🤍

When @JackGrealish asks you to do the worm in the treatment room, you just have bust out the best dance move Finch Farm has ever seen! 🪱 #WorldDownSyndromeDay 💙

Bradford City goalkeeper Sam Walker turned up to a young fans birthday celebration as a surprise 👏 ❤️ #bcafc

Hello @wesstreeting Do you remember Hannah? Yesterday was one of the hardest days as we said goodbye to the most remarkable, formidable and beautiful soul. She was just 39 years old and leaves behind a 5 year old daughter. Hannah spent her final years living with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Even while gravely ill, she campaigned tirelessly for access to #Enhertu and met you to eloquently and respectfully ask for your help. You had, and still have, the power to stop this from happening. Tragically, it is now too late for Hannah and her family. But please do not let her death be in vain. Act now so other women do not die prematurely from this cruel, relentless disease. Secondary breast cancer is the leading cause of death of women aged 35–64 in the UK, that’s 31 women a day. These are mothers, daughters, partners, beloved friends and contributors to society, people with full lives still to live. Please do something. We are begging you @NICEComms @NHSuk @UKLabour @Keir_Starmer @AshleyDalton_MP @METUPUKorg @BreastCancerNow

As heads we need to stand up and protect our staff from this excessive pressure that has been reported as part of the new framework on the people in the classroom. We know it tells us little, we know for some it’s hugely stressful.

🧵Sometimes you pull over in a lay-by and want to howl with frustration. Working in edu for 28 yrs & now with hundreds of schools every year & the stories I heard once a in a blue moon are now multiple times in a single class in almost all schools. It’s absolutely heartbreaking

I remember the old days: When we used to instruct children and staff with contagious illness to stay off school, to avoid spreading it. When we encouraged poorly children to rest and recover at home. When we sympathised with people who were unwell. We called it "care". 1/9

@teamsquarepeg As a SENDCO and as a parent of child with additional needs, I think it is government ministers that need to do this - not school staff. School staff are led and directed by government policies.

This is true. I’m also convinced that if every teacher had to volunteer just one week caring for a SEND child without support or respite, or as a young carer for a parent with additional needs, or lived in a refuge or temporary accommodation 3 bus rides from school, or attended a school where English was not the first language, or travel home through a community they were at risk of grooming or county lines or was made to go to work with an acquired injury or impairment and no accommodations made or signposting to support, greater compassion, understanding and recognition of resilience and perseverance would be given to families’ circumstances and context.

“Dear Sunderland, I wanted to write to you about my mate Jack.” When @SunderlandAFC’s Wilson Isidor read Jack’s story, he felt compelled to visit his Mum, Jackie. What followed will remain with them forever ❤️

I hope the curriculum is being carefully looked at & teachers are being consulted. Many ‘working towards’ children simply haven’t had time to consolidate skills, rather than being less able. We’ve got a maths curriculum that fires a variety of strategies at them without them ever being secure in one. Then we quickly bombard them with an obsession with ‘reasoning’ without them being confident in the basic skill. In English, they are expected to write to such a high standard by 11, they inevitably get rushed on. Children end up confused.

If you lead a party and align with someone who led an institution blind to the harm it caused, deaf to every warning, and unmoved by a preventable death, what does that say of your fitness to lead? What do you value, if not accountability? Who won’t you step on, along the way?

I was incredibly proud to be asked to add my name to the open letter sent to Bridget Phillipson on Monday—and hopefully the letter will not be the only act of this wonderful coalition of voices from across education (watch this space)…

‘School hasn’t changed! Why are so many more young people unable to attend? Don’t they just have to learn to put up with it?’ I’m often asked all of these questions. So here’s a quick answer. School has changed since most of us over the age of 30 were there. Starting in 2010 with Michael Gove, there was a deliberate shift in schools to a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’. This meant, more focus on learning information and facts. Less focus on play, creativity, problem solving and social and emotional skills. There was a philosophy which ignored child development and instead focusing on how to get more information into children and more test results out. More standardised tests have been introduced starting in primary school. Phonics Screening, Multiplication Tables, Spelling Punctuation and Grammar ‘checks’ AKA tests. Secondary schools have become more controlling. I hear regularly of schools where children walk along lines painted on the corridors in silence. I hear of frequent use of detention and isolation. Parents tell me quietly and say that they can’t complain openly because their children don’t want them to make a fuss. There’s a lot of focus on exam results, and education has become about retaining information. All of this has a huge impact on children’s day-to-day experience. More pressure has been introduced throughout the system. There are fewer options for those who don’t enjoy academics. Teachers are stressed, parents are stressed and it all results in stressed children. When they start to say they can’t go to school, the answer is more pressure. When parents complain they’re called vexatious. The answer is fines and threats. No one is listening. So, no, I don’t think this is the ‘real world’ and they ‘just have to learn’. I do think that something has changed. Schools have become less child-friendly, and the children are telling us so.

@LeeBraganza We have 2 weeks and 2 days to go - don’t finish until the 17th!!

Oh dear lordy loos everyone is knackered. My class is knackered, my own kids are knackered. I'm knackered. Someone please tell me how we've got three more days of it.

I’ve been fearing this announcement for the past year, but somehow seeing Amanda Spielman’s moment of triumph lauded by—of all people—Michael Gove in The Spectator, really is salt in a very raw wound. A peerage should not be the automatic reward for holding a crown appointment…

@dave_mcpartlin We came to watch Tranmere playing Fleetwood on sat and after stepping out of the car to that awful smell, I remembered your campaign. Good luck with it!

We’re now selling ‘Stop the Stink’ badges – proudly designed and made by our brilliant pupils – to help raise funds for more banners, posters and campaign materials. Only £1 each – available from the school office - every badge bought is a step closer to making our voices heard.