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Dr. Keven Bartle
@kevbartle
SSAT Senior Education Lead. Founder of Mind-Your-Head.net to help support and sustain headteachers and school leaders. Former Headteacher.
London, England
Mind-Your-Head.net
Joined February 2010
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    Oct 28, 2024
    The nicest thing on my website, which is full of nice things. This is why I started providing reflective supervision. I'm currently working with over 50 people, individually or in groups, in-person or online. Get in touch if you'd like to know more. mind-your-head.net
    3.1K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    I've always been a Labour supporter. I grew up in the North East in the 1980s in a single parent family. When I started teaching in 1995, things were awful at the back end of the last lengthy period of Conservative government. And then 1997 happened and it was amazing.
    213K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    Replying to @kevbartle
    Instead, over nine years of headship, I watched: Families get poorer despite working harder. Social services collapse. 'Fairer funding formulae' redistribute from the have-nots to the haves. Teacher recruitment become ridiculously difficult. Community policing disappear.
    17K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    Replying to @kevbartle
    So, even though I think some of the changes around curriculum have righted the wrongs of the last Labour government, it is very much a time for change. Education does not exist in a bubble. There is such a thing as society and, without change, I fear for our schools.
    25K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    Replying to @kevbartle
    CAMHS waiting lists lengthen to extent that referral is pointless. Teachers paid less and less in real terms despite being asked to do more and more. Support staff seeing wages fall below the levels paid by Amazon and Aldi. Accountability measures become ever more punitive.
    16K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    Replying to @kevbartle
    But, cuts under the austerity agenda started to bite by 2014, the year I became headteacher. And, of all the unforgiveable things that have happened in the past 14 years, the worst was the pledge that austerity would right the economy by 2015. That has been the biggest lie.
    14K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    Replying to @kevbartle
    I could go on, but the most damning thing I can say is that I left a job I loved because all these challenges made me feel like an utter failure. And I haven't looked back because, the way things have turned out, the job would likely have killed me.
    15K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    Replying to @kevbartle
    I became a HoD in 2000 and we had more money than we could spend on students and learning. In 2005 I became an AHT and the school I was at had a Sure Start Children's Centre on site. Every child mattered, but BTECs skewed the outcomes in ways that weren't right.
    14K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 25, 2024
    Replying to @kevbartle
    In 2010 the Labour government left office. But there was at least hope in the White Paper that things in education might work out okay. As DHT I helped create a Teaching School Alliance, and we rebalanced our curriculum so we were "playing the game" less and educating better.
    14K
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    May 26, 2024
    Replying to @missmorton0
    What was so tragic about it was the fact that they never actually closed them and shut down the scheme. Instead they turned off the funding taps and hacked 20+% from LAs and it was LAs that were left to do the dirty work. Awful slow death for the sector.
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    Feb 3, 2018
    Assessment systems are massively convoluted in order to find out something very simple. We are obsessed with the machinery and need to take it apart. @teacherhead #CPTSA18
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    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    Feb 3, 2018
    If you fix the curriculum, pedagogy is likely to follow. @jon_brunskill #CPTSA18
  • user avatar
    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    Oct 18, 2014
    Alongside his best ever tweet, here's @headguruteacher at #TLT14
  • user avatar
    Dr. Keven Bartle
    @kevbartle
    Jul 4, 2019
    Long day at Uni. Passed my doctoral progression viva. Best of all, though, is the fact that my two ‘learning set’ colleagues passed theirs too.