Jim Lauder
@mrjlauder.bsky.social
Dixons Academies. Schools as civic institutions - ensuring our communities have a voice and power. Building place based partnerships. Views my own.
At weekends I post about cooking.
At weekends I post about cooking.
Reposted by Jim Lauder
In the hope that there will be some #BookSky people around in the run-up to Christmas, I am seeking recommendations for the best single volume history of what is normally known as the #Vietnam War. I have read quite a lot on the Secret War in Laos but need more context. Reposts / tags welcome. 🙏
December 23, 2025 at 11:56 AM
We've got some cracking jobs up at the moment, including this opportunity at a school joining our trust. Please have a look at what's there and share if you can - Dixons is a great organisation to work for.
ce0354li.webitrent.com/ce0354li_web...
ce0354li.webitrent.com/ce0354li_web...
Job profile
ce0354li.webitrent.com
December 22, 2025 at 11:56 AM
We've got some cracking jobs up at the moment, including this opportunity at a school joining our trust. Please have a look at what's there and share if you can - Dixons is a great organisation to work for.
ce0354li.webitrent.com/ce0354li_web...
ce0354li.webitrent.com/ce0354li_web...
Fluffy potatoes ready to freeze then roast on Christmas day :)
December 22, 2025 at 11:40 AM
Fluffy potatoes ready to freeze then roast on Christmas day :)
Reflecting on the Mossbourne saga (which I don't really think it's fair to have much of an opinion on), it reinforces that a key, and underthought, aspect of school leadership is taking parents with you on the journey.
Both incredibly difficult and incredibly important in 2025.
Both incredibly difficult and incredibly important in 2025.
December 22, 2025 at 11:34 AM
Reflecting on the Mossbourne saga (which I don't really think it's fair to have much of an opinion on), it reinforces that a key, and underthought, aspect of school leadership is taking parents with you on the journey.
Both incredibly difficult and incredibly important in 2025.
Both incredibly difficult and incredibly important in 2025.
I might have overordered/allowed the butcher to upsell me on the ham.
My guests have just left, with ham sandwiches for the road, and I still have so much ham.
No one else left in my house eats ham 🙃
My guests have just left, with ham sandwiches for the road, and I still have so much ham.
No one else left in my house eats ham 🙃
December 21, 2025 at 10:01 AM
I might have overordered/allowed the butcher to upsell me on the ham.
My guests have just left, with ham sandwiches for the road, and I still have so much ham.
No one else left in my house eats ham 🙃
My guests have just left, with ham sandwiches for the road, and I still have so much ham.
No one else left in my house eats ham 🙃
Reposted by Jim Lauder
December 20, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Ham turned out great. Go figure.
Glaze mostly ran off and burned on the baking tray. Oh well.
Lessons: gently poach the ham, cook the fat quite a bit before glazing, glaze at the end for 10-15 mins, and baste.
Glaze mostly ran off and burned on the baking tray. Oh well.
Lessons: gently poach the ham, cook the fat quite a bit before glazing, glaze at the end for 10-15 mins, and baste.
So this one is probably overcooked, but I'll lather it in colman's, maple syrup and balsamic glaze which will make anything taste good.
And once again, Good Food cooking times are going to turn any meat to leather.
And once again, Good Food cooking times are going to turn any meat to leather.
December 20, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Ham turned out great. Go figure.
Glaze mostly ran off and burned on the baking tray. Oh well.
Lessons: gently poach the ham, cook the fat quite a bit before glazing, glaze at the end for 10-15 mins, and baste.
Glaze mostly ran off and burned on the baking tray. Oh well.
Lessons: gently poach the ham, cook the fat quite a bit before glazing, glaze at the end for 10-15 mins, and baste.
Reposted by Jim Lauder
No. 3 is a fascinating report on approaches to SEND across different jurisdictions by CES by @loicmnzs.bsky.social and others. I have only read the summary so far (linked below) but there is plenty in there to think about!
3a551fc8-7675-4cc5-9ecd-8697a47d348f.filesusr.com/ugd/5d3f2a_f...
3a551fc8-7675-4cc5-9ecd-8697a47d348f.filesusr.com/ugd/5d3f2a_f...
3a551fc8-7675-4cc5-9ecd-8697a47d348f.filesusr.com
December 20, 2025 at 9:14 AM
No. 3 is a fascinating report on approaches to SEND across different jurisdictions by CES by @loicmnzs.bsky.social and others. I have only read the summary so far (linked below) but there is plenty in there to think about!
3a551fc8-7675-4cc5-9ecd-8697a47d348f.filesusr.com/ugd/5d3f2a_f...
3a551fc8-7675-4cc5-9ecd-8697a47d348f.filesusr.com/ugd/5d3f2a_f...
Reposted by Jim Lauder
If you're not using a thermometer you're not serious. Also people need to know that all cooking times overcook meat because nobody gets sued for a joint being tough.
December 20, 2025 at 7:44 AM
If you're not using a thermometer you're not serious. Also people need to know that all cooking times overcook meat because nobody gets sued for a joint being tough.
I'm learning ham is really variable. Couple of weeks ago I gently poached a supermarket 1.2kg gammon for 50 mins and it was up to 65 degrees (with rest time, gets to 75).
This afternoon I've done a butcher's 1.8kg for 50 mins and it's smashed 75.
Lesson is, check with thermometer after 40 mins.
This afternoon I've done a butcher's 1.8kg for 50 mins and it's smashed 75.
Lesson is, check with thermometer after 40 mins.
December 19, 2025 at 7:27 PM
I'm learning ham is really variable. Couple of weeks ago I gently poached a supermarket 1.2kg gammon for 50 mins and it was up to 65 degrees (with rest time, gets to 75).
This afternoon I've done a butcher's 1.8kg for 50 mins and it's smashed 75.
Lesson is, check with thermometer after 40 mins.
This afternoon I've done a butcher's 1.8kg for 50 mins and it's smashed 75.
Lesson is, check with thermometer after 40 mins.
Your regular reminder that the students sitting in our classrooms continue to be poor because as a country we choose to drag our feet making anything better.
What a fucking joke this country is. If we can’t build a tram faster than the late 2030s, we should just give up.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Leeds-Bradford £2.5bn tram plan delayed after government review
West Yorkshire's mayor says she is confident the trams will be running
www.bbc.co.uk
December 18, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Your regular reminder that the students sitting in our classrooms continue to be poor because as a country we choose to drag our feet making anything better.
Waffle waffle AI waffle skills waffle jobs not invented yet waffle let's change the whole curriculum and way we teach to something proven to fail.
Haven't seen one of these in the wild for a few weeks. It's a really solid effort in the genre.
theconversation.com/teenagers-ar...
Haven't seen one of these in the wild for a few weeks. It's a really solid effort in the genre.
theconversation.com/teenagers-ar...
Teenagers are preparing for the jobs of 25 years ago – and schools are missing the AI revolution
One-third of students in an OECD survey said school has not taught them anything useful for a job.
theconversation.com
December 17, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Waffle waffle AI waffle skills waffle jobs not invented yet waffle let's change the whole curriculum and way we teach to something proven to fail.
Haven't seen one of these in the wild for a few weeks. It's a really solid effort in the genre.
theconversation.com/teenagers-ar...
Haven't seen one of these in the wild for a few weeks. It's a really solid effort in the genre.
theconversation.com/teenagers-ar...
Last minute stocking filler idea - this from two of my fantastic colleagues! So proud. Out December 22nd.
December 16, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Last minute stocking filler idea - this from two of my fantastic colleagues! So proud. Out December 22nd.
Reposted by Jim Lauder
Happy 250th birthday, Jane Austen! Why not celebrate by reading my hot-off-the-press lil piece which sheds new light on the composition process for JA's greatest novel (no questions, sit yo ass down) PERSUASION. It involved archival sleuthing, so was cracking fun to write. jasna.org/publications...
![This article presents a new theory about the creative genesis of Sir Walter Elliot’s Baronetage, the figurative device looming so large in the first and last chapters of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817). Most readers will recall the gratification that Sir Walter derives from consulting his “book of books” (7) and annotating the margins of the Elliot entry—a superb stroke of comic character-building on Austen’s part but also a motif that gestures towards her wider interest in social snobbery and the contemporary print culture that captured, enabled, and reinforced it. Scholars have noted that baronetages constituted a real eighteenth-century publishing phenomenon and have speculated that Austen had a specific text in mind when composing her entries about the Elliot family. For example, constructing a brilliant argument about Persuasion’s cross-fertilization of aristocratic and naval charactonyms, Janine Barchas suggests that Austen was “probabl[y] . . . gesturing to the latest edition” of Debrett’s Baronetage of England, published in 1815 (Barchas 207–08).
I argue that a more likely candidate to have inspired Austen is a baronetage less well-known than Debrett’s: the anonymous two-volume edition of the New Baronetage of England printed for William Miller and Edmund Lloyd in June 1804. This edition was kept in the library at Godmersham Park, which Austen used intensively for two months during late 1813 (Sabor, “Godmersham” 34–35). Moreover, selected entries are annotated in precisely the fashion that Austen attributes to Sir Walter. In this article I introduce the reader to the Godmersham Park Baronetage, build a case that it was annotated by Austen’s niece Fanny Knight (1793–1882) around 1810–12, and consider evidence that Jane Austen may have consulted it when she was planning Persuasion. In a similar spirit to Gillian Dow in her recent article addressing Marianne Knight’s books, I unite bibliographic analysis with other evidence in the service of a “specula…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3usbb4ptt4tse4scg3v2ofyx/bafkreih6cscn2eeosiddxlvokskssxpcoyxhicwzu7vdsv726iyctp2lxe@jpeg)
December 16, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Happy 250th birthday, Jane Austen! Why not celebrate by reading my hot-off-the-press lil piece which sheds new light on the composition process for JA's greatest novel (no questions, sit yo ass down) PERSUASION. It involved archival sleuthing, so was cracking fun to write. jasna.org/publications...
This feels like a decent step forward. Examples (as with the IHRA anti-semitism definition) would be useful too.
As drafted, it would encourage schools and employers to allow prayer, which is right IMO.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
As drafted, it would encourage schools and employers to allow prayer, which is right IMO.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Ministers finalising definition of anti-Muslim hatred
The draft definition does not include the term Islamophobia, after concerns were raised over freedom of speech.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 15, 2025 at 8:35 PM
This feels like a decent step forward. Examples (as with the IHRA anti-semitism definition) would be useful too.
As drafted, it would encourage schools and employers to allow prayer, which is right IMO.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
As drafted, it would encourage schools and employers to allow prayer, which is right IMO.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Reposted by Jim Lauder
It only took a year but we did it, thanks Bluesky people! www.yorkmix.com/pictures-yor...
I now know more about the UK artificial tree market than I'd ever expected.
I now know more about the UK artificial tree market than I'd ever expected.
OK, fairly deranged question really, but does anyone know how you’d go about getting a giant indoor artificial tree like this built in a primary school library as a reading hub? I’ve raised some funds for this and don’t know if you go off the shelf, get a set designer (do you know one?) or whatever.
December 14, 2025 at 8:57 AM
It only took a year but we did it, thanks Bluesky people! www.yorkmix.com/pictures-yor...
I now know more about the UK artificial tree market than I'd ever expected.
I now know more about the UK artificial tree market than I'd ever expected.
Reposted by Jim Lauder
Amazing work! Well done to all involved.
This is a lovely article about the work of Citizens UK, highlighting Tyne and Wear Citizens and their great achievements.
Our trust supports this work (and makes sure our students and families are at the heart ;)) in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorks.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Our trust supports this work (and makes sure our students and families are at the heart ;)) in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorks.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
‘People will listen’: turning anger into community pride in North Shields
A tour of local ‘wins’ shows how the charity Citizens UK is working with residents to build a better, fairer society
www.theguardian.com
December 14, 2025 at 8:04 AM
Amazing work! Well done to all involved.
This is a lovely article about the work of Citizens UK, highlighting Tyne and Wear Citizens and their great achievements.
Our trust supports this work (and makes sure our students and families are at the heart ;)) in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorks.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Our trust supports this work (and makes sure our students and families are at the heart ;)) in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorks.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
‘People will listen’: turning anger into community pride in North Shields
A tour of local ‘wins’ shows how the charity Citizens UK is working with residents to build a better, fairer society
www.theguardian.com
December 13, 2025 at 9:55 PM
This is a lovely article about the work of Citizens UK, highlighting Tyne and Wear Citizens and their great achievements.
Our trust supports this work (and makes sure our students and families are at the heart ;)) in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorks.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Our trust supports this work (and makes sure our students and families are at the heart ;)) in Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorks.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Honestly, the best thing schools can do in the last week of term is keep things as consistent as possible.
December 13, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Honestly, the best thing schools can do in the last week of term is keep things as consistent as possible.
Reposted by Jim Lauder
Also while the state of knowledge and associated actions remains so poor in the SEND system, this risks exposing more children to bad practice.
December 12, 2025 at 7:36 AM
Also while the state of knowledge and associated actions remains so poor in the SEND system, this risks exposing more children to bad practice.
This is really good with some insightful points from @pepediiasio.bsky.social and others.
To spell out really clearly the risk I fear: the govt white paper will basically say two things.
1) make schools generally more inclusive
2) open a load of units
These two are in tension.
To spell out really clearly the risk I fear: the govt white paper will basically say two things.
1) make schools generally more inclusive
2) open a load of units
These two are in tension.
Creating more specialist places in mainstream schools won’t tackle the SEND funding crisis without huge investment, leaders warn ministers
Don’t overestimate resource base savings, heads warn Labour
Leaders question education secretary’s suggestion that creating more specialist places in mainstream schools will address SEND cost pressures outlined in Budget
www.tes.com
December 12, 2025 at 7:15 AM
This is really good with some insightful points from @pepediiasio.bsky.social and others.
To spell out really clearly the risk I fear: the govt white paper will basically say two things.
1) make schools generally more inclusive
2) open a load of units
These two are in tension.
To spell out really clearly the risk I fear: the govt white paper will basically say two things.
1) make schools generally more inclusive
2) open a load of units
These two are in tension.
Reposted by Jim Lauder
Are predicted grades accurate?
This wonderful blog from @fftedudatalab.bsky.social explores the question, and my takehome is that *on average* they might be, but for an individual student it's pretty much guesswork.
Well worth a read.
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2025/12/pred...
This wonderful blog from @fftedudatalab.bsky.social explores the question, and my takehome is that *on average* they might be, but for an individual student it's pretty much guesswork.
Well worth a read.
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2025/12/pred...
December 10, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Are predicted grades accurate?
This wonderful blog from @fftedudatalab.bsky.social explores the question, and my takehome is that *on average* they might be, but for an individual student it's pretty much guesswork.
Well worth a read.
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2025/12/pred...
This wonderful blog from @fftedudatalab.bsky.social explores the question, and my takehome is that *on average* they might be, but for an individual student it's pretty much guesswork.
Well worth a read.
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2025/12/pred...
Reposted by Jim Lauder
Feedback: The engine room of adaptive teaching
Corinne Settle, @theeef.bsky.social teaching and learning specialist, discusses how teachers can use feedback to adapt teaching and improve learning.
educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/engine-...
Corinne Settle, @theeef.bsky.social teaching and learning specialist, discusses how teachers can use feedback to adapt teaching and improve learning.
educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/engine-...
Feedback: The engine room of adaptive teaching
What happens when teachers act on what pupils show them — and use those moments to shape learning as it happens?
educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk
December 10, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Feedback: The engine room of adaptive teaching
Corinne Settle, @theeef.bsky.social teaching and learning specialist, discusses how teachers can use feedback to adapt teaching and improve learning.
educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/engine-...
Corinne Settle, @theeef.bsky.social teaching and learning specialist, discusses how teachers can use feedback to adapt teaching and improve learning.
educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/engine-...
Reposted by Jim Lauder
With the Schools White Paper due early next year, Labour has the chance to be bold – and here are 4 policy ideas that would show the party’s vision for education, says this adviser
4 ways Labour can show vision with its Schools White Paper
Aside from much-needed SEND plans, Joe Hallgarten sets out some policies for the White Paper that would demonstrate Labour’s commitment to true system reform in education
www.tes.com
December 10, 2025 at 7:05 AM
With the Schools White Paper due early next year, Labour has the chance to be bold – and here are 4 policy ideas that would show the party’s vision for education, says this adviser