Hayden plans the episode this week, which means you get a game. He opens with a bedtime story about his nearly-three-year-old that ends with the question no parent wants to hear: “Dad, where am I going to put my bogey?” Then Blind Rank is back by listener request. Dylan has to rank playground duty, parents’ evening, teaching art, the staffroom and one more mystery job without knowing what’s coming next. He gets badly stitched up at number one.

Next, Dylan drove past two primary schools on the way to the new office and counted more than a dozen parents vaping on the school run. Is that just normal now? The boys get into what kids pick up from it, vaping in secondary toilets, the generational smoking ban and whether it’s a nanny state, and vapes made to look like highlighters.

In the Q&A, a listener asks what you’d buy if you had to stock a brand new school with maths resources from scratch. Dienes, Cuisenaire rods, multilink cubes, real clock faces, plenty of 3D shapes, and the place value sliders you should never pay for. That turns into a proper conversation about using CPA flexibly and the links in maths that actually make a difference.

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Hayden is back after one whole week of paternity leave, with a 10-day-old son called Albie (who Dylan has already renamed Albatross). We talk about how much calmer you are second time round, which parenting "rules" turn out not to matter and which ones really do, then get properly stuck into why children are so gross: snot bubbles in Reception, the Year 6 residential room nobody wants to open on day three, and a crisp eaten straight out of the bin.

Then your questions. One listener's school has put a twilight, a parents evening and an open evening in the same week. Is that unreasonable? Short answer: yes. We get into directed time, why an open evening should replace something rather than just be added on, and whether teaching really is harder than other jobs. Plus, after our Bridget Phillipson interview, would new Education Secretary Lucy Powell ever come on the show? Lucy, the invite is open.

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Once a year we ask you for your school's biggest red flags, and once a year you absolutely bury us. Nearly a thousand comments on Facebook alone, so we've pulled out the worst of them and gone through them one by one.

A memo banning anyone below SLT from drinking ground coffee, after a colleague was caught with a filter mug. A member of leadership asking a teacher if she knew what "professional" meant. A skirts-only school that told an NQT to leave the interview there and then if she'd rather wear trousers. An open plan school with no staff room and hot desking, which sets Dylan off on private schools, class sizes and what the people with actual money choose to do. Staples that had to match the backing paper, coloured in with permanent pen. A fire alarm set off to stop a lunchtime union meeting. Five compulsory parent phone calls a week, logged in three places, because nobody wants to pay for an attendance officer. A suit jacket rule enforced on a woman eight months pregnant. Being told to call the children "clients". And a school where teachers weren't allowed a sip of water in front of a class.

Somewhere in the middle of it Hayden runs a riled-up meter on Dylan and gets him from a two to a nine, and there's some baby news too. Fair warning, the language gets away from us on this one.

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England has just landed in the world's top ten for reading, maths and science. Good news, surely? Dylan and Hayden are not so sure, because the same PISA results show reading ability falling off a cliff worldwide, and the countries where children use AI the most are falling behind the fastest.

Here's the article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgy6n0l4rdo

First, though, it is episode one from the new office, complete with a slight echo and a metal works next door. Dylan is fresh off a sleeper train to Edinburgh (think bunk beds, a shower that doubles as the toilet, and a mate who is six foot three), and he has some explaining to do about that Scottish teacher pay post that got a few people worked up.

Then two listener questions. With AI able to manipulate images, should schools stop publishing pupil photos altogether? And which subject did each of them love teaching far more than they expected? Hayden's answer says a lot about what league tables miss. Dylan's ends up in a confession about marking writing without actually reading it.

Honest, a bit echoey, and back in business.

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One day into the new year, and a listener is already drained. Not the big stuff. The whispering, the fiddling, the constant "low level" disruption that never quite stops. She doesn't want to moan all year, but it's looking that way. Hayden has a story about the one thing a leader said to him that made stop-start teaching feel like the right call, and both lads are clear that "low level" is the wrong name for it.

Before that, some news. Dylan and Hayden are moving into an office, which is not the same as buying a flat together, whatever Instagram decided. They talk candidly about a year of working from home, cabin fever, and why no combination of teaching, business and podcast has ever felt perfect.

Also this week: a Jen Foster post on what to ask instead of "how was your summer?", and why the "just get over it" crowd wind Dylan up. A holiday poll (six weeks, or four plus two-week breaks all year?). And Dylan's worry that AI lesson generators are pushing "save time" ahead of "good lesson", with Hayden pushing back.

Plus the eternal question: is there anything wrong with sending emails at 8pm?

Honest, funny, and a proper first-week-back listen.

🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!
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An ECT one week in, a class sat well below the expected level, and a head already spinning with schemes, planning and new information. What do you actually say to them?

Season 5 opens with a full back to school Q&A. Hayden defends the horseshoe seating plan, and Dylan has to break it to him that what he ran for years was, in fact, a staple. From there it turns properly useful: mixed attainment seating, whether pairing your high attainers with your low attainers every single day is really helping either of them, and the moment a child offered to hand out the support sheets and reeled off exactly the right six names.

Then the ideal INSET day, which mostly means giving staff the time and putting the sugar paper away. When normal lessons should resume. Icebreakers and register games that genuinely work. And a new senior leader asking how to deliver the SIP in September without flattening everyone, which leads to a change policy most schools should probably steal.

Honest, funny, and timed for the walk in on Tuesday morning.

🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!
🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org
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Five weeks of rehearsals. Year Six production. Opening night a few hours away. And then the head teacher decides the children cannot stand on the benches, for health and safety reasons. The same benches the school uses for bench ball.

Before that, a cracking question from a newly qualified teacher whose university swapped the 5,000 word essay for a shorter portfolio and a recorded presentation. Could schools do something similar? Dylan and Hayden get into timed reading comprehension, why pace is weighted so heavily, and the trap of fixing assessment for one group by quietly breaking it for another.

There is also a listener asking whether they would have a Reform politician on the show. That one turns into an honest conversation about platforming, accountability and where the line actually sits.

Honest, funny, and a gentle way back in before September.

🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!
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A Year 1 teacher has been told her school is bringing in continuous provision from September, and she is quietly worried her class will not be where they should be by July. Dylan and Hayden take that worry seriously, because badly implemented provision is a real risk. Then they ask the harder question. Where does "where they should be" actually come from, and who decided it?

That spirals into knives and forks, shoelaces and shared responsibility, and where the line sits between what a school should help with and what it genuinely cannot take on.

Hayden also gets asked when Halloween is. It goes about as well as you would expect, and there is now a poll.

Elsewhere, honest assembly tips including the one thing their old head did every single day without fail, and a straight answer on why Wednesday episodes disappeared.

Then the big one. Andy Burnham's new technical routes for Year 10, and why both hosts want it to work but are braced for schools to game it.

Honest, funny, and a proper end of summer listen.

🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!
🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org
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