The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family.

Hello and welcome to episode 142 season 6 episode 18.

I'm Timmy Spees and a podcast with me Mr P and the other Mr P.

Welcome back guys for another one of the episode.

We did one last week, didn't we?

Yes.

What it was earlier in the week.

It was.

Yeah.

And it's been quite the week and obviously we'd like to start by very quickly discussing what I'm sure so many people working in and around education will be aware of which is the tragic passing of the head teacher in Reading Ruth Perry.

I have been quite proactive in sharing the news and trying to use my platform as best as possible to raise awareness and question the circumstances that the family of Ruth believes contributed to her taking her own life.

And I think the most upsetting thing about it is that you can completely understand given the pressures that had teachers, especially our school leaders are under.

And since obviously sharing that tragic news, I have been inundated with messages easily a dozen or so that have either shared stories of a similar,

just similar stories of people they know or even had teachers themselves who have said they've been in that similar sort of situation.

There's one head teacher who said that the offstead went so badly on the drive home after, you know, really late after day one.

They were very close to just completely, you know, just driving into a tree.

And it's just such, it's just so upsetting and I've really struggled with it.

This week I've found it really, really hard and tough and I've been upset a number of times sort of talking about it.

And yeah, so I want to try and obviously spread the message because I think things need to change.

Offstead in its current form is not fit for purpose.

And things do need to change obviously.

Then I've seen the story of the school in Newbury who initially were going to refuse to allow offstead to come into school but have had to since allowed the inspection take place, which I just, you know, I've got massive, massive respect for what the head teacher was trying to do.

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