CEO Thought for the Week

Hi All,

Happy New Year to you all and I hope you had a fantastic Christmas break!

As we start the new year our thoughts always turn to New Year resolutions and what we may want to stop doing, start doing or just keep on doing as we progress into 2025. I’ve already come across a few people who are training for sporting events later in the year, starting their new healthy eating regimes or who are just determined to try and keep their good habits going! It’s an exciting time of the year with loads of opportunities ahead!

As we embrace these new opportunities (and challenges) our mindset is absolutely crucial to building and keeping the positive changes going. We can be so hard on ourselves if we miss that one gym session or accidently fall over and land with a doughnut in our mouths!! Suddenly, we feel we’ve failed, slipped off the wagon and our efforts to date have been wasted. Might as well give up!!! This isn’t true but our “self-talk” is rarely rational or kind! We have a tendency as human beings to try and make everything binary- we’re succeeding or we’re failing, we get it all right or it’s all wrong. This is just not the case…. we simply need to see the bigger picture and ask ourselves are we improving? Did I eat slightly less cake, walk a bit further, listen a bit harder than I was doing before or I did last week. A move away from a “boom or bust” approach that sees us writing off our efforts because of one slip is the key to building longer term habits.

This applies to our work in school, our relationships with pupils and colleagues and our perception of impact. One tricky interaction does not mean the relationship is broken, one difficult lesson does not wipe out a productive day, one tricky exchange with a parent does not mean parents don’t value the school. As we continue our work across the Trust let’s try and keep perspective and support each other to see the positive steps that have been taken over time. You are all doing amazing things so let’s make 2025 a year of optimism and energy and keep the good times rolling!

Have a great start to 2025 and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Best Wishes

Gavin