Over the past few years I’ve taught the Language Change topic at A-level. This page lists various links to relevant articles that I’ve noticed. Twitter users will also find them grouped via the hashtag #LangChange. UWire: Why English as the dominant world language is bad Boston Globe: Why we love the language police Oxford Dictionaries: Five events that shaped English Mental Floss: Beatnik slang phrases Independent: top ten eponyms Video: A brief history of English plurals BBC: Typos and spelling mistakes don’t matter Mental Floss: Fifty old British dialect words Mike Stuchbery: Why I’m bann ..read more

These were articles that caught my eye each week and which I used with GCSE students to build familiarity with non-fiction texts, especially in teaching writing to persuade. I stopped adding articles when I finished my job as headteacher/English teacher in March 2017. But I hope you’ll find this and the earlier archive useful for class discussion, debate, and in teaching writing. 2016-17: 8 September, 2016 Don’t blame headteachers for uniform - it’s lazy parents Rosie Millard, Independent 20 September, 2016 Our cars are choked. We are on the brink of carmaggedon George Monbiot, Guardian ..read more

These were articles that caught my eye each week and which I used with GCSE students to build familiarity with non-fiction texts, especially in teaching writing to persuade. The rationale is at the foot of the page. 2015-16: 31 August, 2015 ‘If you aren’t angry about migrants, you should be’ Stefano Hatfield, Independent 31 August, 2015 Our pig has become the Justin Bieber of pigs Dom Joly, Independent 14 September, 2015 We need to get rid of mobile phones in the classroom Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Independent 24 September, 2015 Why boredom is good for us David Robson, BBC Future 26 Septem ..read more

On April 18, I take up my elected post as General Secretary of the Association of School & College Leaders (ASCL). Here’s the written text of my brief address to delegates at our 2017 conference in Birmingham: ‘We speak on behalf of members; we act on behalf of children’. This is ASCL. This is what we stand for; this is what we do. And whether you work at a maintained or independent school, a college or multi-academy trust; whether you are headteacher or chief executive, business manager, deputy, assistant head, a consultant or a someone with whole-school responsibilities, secondary o ..read more

This page will be used to collect examples of interesting and quirky bits of writing, so that when a student is told by her English teacher to be more interesting, she might read some of these pieces to see what ‘interesting’ actually means. Tim Dowling: The Long Goodbye (Guardian 20/7/13) (Look at the way he tells a family story largely through dialogue) Will Self: Why I Hate Jamie Oliver (New Statesman 31/10/13) (Look at the bold vocabulary, the splenetic sense of voice, the sheer audacity of it) Russell Brand: We Deserve More from our Democratic System (Guardian 5/11/13) (Look at the se ..read more