Daniel Bundred 🦡
@danielbundred.bsky.social
Head of English; overuse of nautical metaphors; very sporadic blogger. Views are not necessarily those of my employer, unless focus testing reveals them to be very uncontroversial.
These days I go into full school CPD with a clear idea about what the session will be, often because the focus has been shared in advance. When I started out you could never tell; would it be refining in class questioning or would you all be dressing up as flowers and acting out a learning garden?
November 23, 2025 at 7:16 PM
These days I go into full school CPD with a clear idea about what the session will be, often because the focus has been shared in advance. When I started out you could never tell; would it be refining in class questioning or would you all be dressing up as flowers and acting out a learning garden?
I think anyone who has been in teaching for ten or more years has a lot of experiences like this, I doubt it's entirely eliminated to this day. But the modern notion that CPD that be focused clearly on the school's identified T&L priorities is depriving our new teachers of great stories.
November 23, 2025 at 7:12 PM
I think anyone who has been in teaching for ten or more years has a lot of experiences like this, I doubt it's entirely eliminated to this day. But the modern notion that CPD that be focused clearly on the school's identified T&L priorities is depriving our new teachers of great stories.
It's fascinating to see how mistakes, corrected swiftly, end up permeating the discourse.
Child poverty in England is unacceptably high for a developed and wealthy nation but it's a third higher than Norway (8.8%) not ten times higher. It's 12.7% not 32.1%.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
Child poverty in England is unacceptably high for a developed and wealthy nation but it's a third higher than Norway (8.8%) not ten times higher. It's 12.7% not 32.1%.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
November 23, 2025 at 6:00 PM
It's now all over Bluesky and people all over the world are interacting with it as though it's true. Given that we are seemingly just allowed to make up statistics here I'd like to say that the child poverty rate in Denmark is 1,000,000% and the children are all made of Lego.
November 23, 2025 at 5:58 PM
It's now all over Bluesky and people all over the world are interacting with it as though it's true. Given that we are seemingly just allowed to make up statistics here I'd like to say that the child poverty rate in Denmark is 1,000,000% and the children are all made of Lego.
I'd had that assembly when I was in primary school, completely bizarre. I was even more baffled when I started teaching and found out that it came from a book and thousands of teachers and headteachers must have done it across the country... why?!
November 23, 2025 at 5:49 PM
I'd had that assembly when I was in primary school, completely bizarre. I was even more baffled when I started teaching and found out that it came from a book and thousands of teachers and headteachers must have done it across the country... why?!
I've seen it a lot, it's very big, this was the first time I'd consciously noticed a claim made by it and thought 'wait a minute, I've seen something like that, I remember its author refuting it months ago'
November 23, 2025 at 5:45 PM
I've seen it a lot, it's very big, this was the first time I'd consciously noticed a claim made by it and thought 'wait a minute, I've seen something like that, I remember its author refuting it months ago'
Also a version of the same thing happened at least three (possibly six) times that year, each time to do a different but similarly mad task often accompanied by a lecture by an utter lunatic. I shudder to think how much would have been spent by the MAT on travel.
November 23, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Also a version of the same thing happened at least three (possibly six) times that year, each time to do a different but similarly mad task often accompanied by a lecture by an utter lunatic. I shudder to think how much would have been spent by the MAT on travel.
I wouldn't believe that it happened to me, except for the fact that I tweeted it some years ago and had loads of people tell me they were in the exact same session. There were about sixty of us.
November 23, 2025 at 4:36 PM
I wouldn't believe that it happened to me, except for the fact that I tweeted it some years ago and had loads of people tell me they were in the exact same session. There were about sixty of us.
I told a trainee that in my ECT year we woke up at 5am mid-week to travel over 120 miles; on arrival we were blindfolded and told to build a tower out of wooden blocks as a metaphor for the ECT process, we got home after midnight and returned to teaching the next day. It sounds like a fever dream.
November 23, 2025 at 4:34 PM
I told a trainee that in my ECT year we woke up at 5am mid-week to travel over 120 miles; on arrival we were blindfolded and told to build a tower out of wooden blocks as a metaphor for the ECT process, we got home after midnight and returned to teaching the next day. It sounds like a fever dream.
It's a nice companion piece to the book that suggests the teacher eats dog food and then stands in the bin.
November 23, 2025 at 4:24 PM
It's a nice companion piece to the book that suggests the teacher eats dog food and then stands in the bin.
I don't think you'd now find many primary school classrooms as he describe. It's one of a handful of books I keep as a memorial to a past atrocity. Whenever the urge to eulogise the past becomes strong I revisit those books and remind myself what teaching used to be like, we must never forget.
November 23, 2025 at 4:06 PM
I don't think you'd now find many primary school classrooms as he describe. It's one of a handful of books I keep as a memorial to a past atrocity. Whenever the urge to eulogise the past becomes strong I revisit those books and remind myself what teaching used to be like, we must never forget.
The mandate is growth; why not introduce a version of the US H1-B visa and set about persuading US pharmaceutical companies to relocate here given the anti-science and anti-medicine culture right now in the US?
If the electorate feel that they're richer, they'll forget about immigration.
If the electorate feel that they're richer, they'll forget about immigration.
November 23, 2025 at 12:57 PM
The mandate is growth; why not introduce a version of the US H1-B visa and set about persuading US pharmaceutical companies to relocate here given the anti-science and anti-medicine culture right now in the US?
If the electorate feel that they're richer, they'll forget about immigration.
If the electorate feel that they're richer, they'll forget about immigration.
The media, whatever their political persuasion, can't not follow the PM on a tour of all the new housing developments being built, the windfarms rising from the ground or sea, the rail being laid, meeting the thousands of enthusiastic new engineering apprentices building the Britain of the future.
November 23, 2025 at 12:51 PM
The media, whatever their political persuasion, can't not follow the PM on a tour of all the new housing developments being built, the windfarms rising from the ground or sea, the rail being laid, meeting the thousands of enthusiastic new engineering apprentices building the Britain of the future.
Absolutely, they came in with an insuperable majority and a mandate to make significant change - they haven't made significant progress on the things that their electorate cared most about and they've let their agenda be set by a party with five MPs.
November 23, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Absolutely, they came in with an insuperable majority and a mandate to make significant change - they haven't made significant progress on the things that their electorate cared most about and they've let their agenda be set by a party with five MPs.
If you're asking for the book, it's 'The Fun Teacher's Toolkit' by Rob Plevin.
It's the fourth book in the Needs-Focused Teaching Resource series. I'm not sure which needs the series was devoted to, but I confess that I don't lose sleep over the likelihood that I'm not meeting those needs.
It's the fourth book in the Needs-Focused Teaching Resource series. I'm not sure which needs the series was devoted to, but I confess that I don't lose sleep over the likelihood that I'm not meeting those needs.
November 23, 2025 at 12:41 PM
If you're asking for the book, it's 'The Fun Teacher's Toolkit' by Rob Plevin.
It's the fourth book in the Needs-Focused Teaching Resource series. I'm not sure which needs the series was devoted to, but I confess that I don't lose sleep over the likelihood that I'm not meeting those needs.
It's the fourth book in the Needs-Focused Teaching Resource series. I'm not sure which needs the series was devoted to, but I confess that I don't lose sleep over the likelihood that I'm not meeting those needs.
While I wouldn't object to banning X, I don't think that not banning it is a failure of the OSA:
'Ofcom’s guidance encourages platforms to focus on “high harm” content, such as child porn, sex trafficking, and narcotics and weapons sales—not offensive posts.'
'Ofcom’s guidance encourages platforms to focus on “high harm” content, such as child porn, sex trafficking, and narcotics and weapons sales—not offensive posts.'
November 23, 2025 at 11:59 AM
While I wouldn't object to banning X, I don't think that not banning it is a failure of the OSA:
'Ofcom’s guidance encourages platforms to focus on “high harm” content, such as child porn, sex trafficking, and narcotics and weapons sales—not offensive posts.'
'Ofcom’s guidance encourages platforms to focus on “high harm” content, such as child porn, sex trafficking, and narcotics and weapons sales—not offensive posts.'
Either of them can remove a child from your lesson, but only Batman freezes the entire class when he appears in the doorway.
November 23, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Either of them can remove a child from your lesson, but only Batman freezes the entire class when he appears in the doorway.
Canonically Batman is the DHT in charge of behaviour while Spiderman is the teenager acquiring school experience before undertaking teacher training.
November 23, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Canonically Batman is the DHT in charge of behaviour while Spiderman is the teenager acquiring school experience before undertaking teacher training.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
November 23, 2025 at 8:47 AM
Ecclesiastes 1:9
Interestingly the original tweet had 28.3% as the proportion of UK children living in poverty, an extra 5% appears to have been found unsourced from somewhere.
November 23, 2025 at 8:07 AM
Interestingly the original tweet had 28.3% as the proportion of UK children living in poverty, an extra 5% appears to have been found unsourced from somewhere.
This statistic originally came from a tweet six months ago. It was wrong and the author corrected it. Child poverty is 8.8% in Norway and 12.7% in the UK.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
Are UK child poverty rates over seven times higher than those in Scandinavia? - FactCheckNI
On 26 March in a post on social media, BBC NI journalist Mandy McAuley made a claim about recent child poverty figures in the UK compared with Scandinavia: “#ChildPoverty Denmark 2.4% Finland 3.2% Nor...
factcheckni.org
November 23, 2025 at 8:04 AM
This statistic originally came from a tweet six months ago. It was wrong and the author corrected it. Child poverty is 8.8% in Norway and 12.7% in the UK.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
It's worth saying that the original author of that statistic was mistaken and corrected the record six months ago; the child poverty rate is 12.7%.
Still unacceptably high, but less than half of what is claimed.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
Still unacceptably high, but less than half of what is claimed.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
Are UK child poverty rates over seven times higher than those in Scandinavia? - FactCheckNI
On 26 March in a post on social media, BBC NI journalist Mandy McAuley made a claim about recent child poverty figures in the UK compared with Scandinavia: “#ChildPoverty Denmark 2.4% Finland 3.2% Nor...
factcheckni.org
November 23, 2025 at 7:57 AM
It's worth saying that the original author of that statistic was mistaken and corrected the record six months ago; the child poverty rate is 12.7%.
Still unacceptably high, but less than half of what is claimed.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
Still unacceptably high, but less than half of what is claimed.
factcheckni.org/articles/are...
The problem is he's lost control of the narrative totally. Nobody voted him on the basis that he was going to be horrible to migrants, but that's most of the current messaging; housebuilding has stalled, unemployment is up, there's no early achievement to point to.
November 23, 2025 at 6:02 AM
The problem is he's lost control of the narrative totally. Nobody voted him on the basis that he was going to be horrible to migrants, but that's most of the current messaging; housebuilding has stalled, unemployment is up, there's no early achievement to point to.
Would we have a weak economy, a rise in unemployment, a decrease in total house building, while the government distracted the public from its mediocrity by running a bizarre hate campaign against immigrants?
We're lucky we didn't end up with the government responsible for that...
We're lucky we didn't end up with the government responsible for that...
November 23, 2025 at 5:58 AM
Would we have a weak economy, a rise in unemployment, a decrease in total house building, while the government distracted the public from its mediocrity by running a bizarre hate campaign against immigrants?
We're lucky we didn't end up with the government responsible for that...
We're lucky we didn't end up with the government responsible for that...