Dear UK politicians, There’s a Year 7 assembly story I remember very well from my time as a middle school headteacher… It involves a frog, a saucepan of water and some heat. The frog is happy in its water, even though the temperature is getting hotter. It doesn’t complain and it doesn’t jump out of…
IN 1975, John T. Molloy published “Dress for Success,” a manual for male office attire. The book proved to be a best-seller. I’m not sure his advice would pass muster today… Sooner or later, most of my clients ask if it is ever appropriate to wear sports jackets to the office. Some indicate that other…
UK Scouting is celebrating YouShape month at the moment. Youth Shaped Scouting takes place all year round – indeed it’s at the very heart of what Scouting is about. Baden-Powell was fond of saying “Ask the boy”, to remind adults of the importance of what educationalists might call the “subsidiarity principle”. (If he…
This summer, our friends at the Fédération du Scoutisme-Français organised Roverway, a gathering of 5000 young Europeans, focused on European citizenship, commitment and living together. This event was aligned with the aim of Scouting and Guiding: educating active and committed citizens, who have a positive impact on their communities and on the world. This short film explores…
I’ve been asked by a number of people if I could share the words of the address that HRH The Earl of Wessex gave at last week’s diamond anniversary celebration of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award in Westminster Abbey. I can do better than that. Here is a recording of the speech itself.
This morning, I was privileged to join more than 2,000 people at an extraordinary service of thanksgiving, held at a Westminster Abbey, to celebrate 60 years of The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award. We were joined by HM The Queen, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and TRH The Earl and Countess of Wessex. In…
I learned a new word recently: “Waithood”; the bewildering time in which increasingly large numbers of young people are spending their best years waiting. They’ve completed school, but haven’t been able to find a job; they feel like they should have moved out of their parents’ house, but they’re still stuck in their childhood bedrooms;…
I know that I can sometimes (no, often) bore for Britain when talking about the differences between formal, non-formal and informal education. Pixar have just released a beautiful short film that portrays perfectly what I understand informal education to be. Required viewing, I think. Lasting just six minutes, the feature tells the tale…
Dear organisers of Cheltenham’s Half Marathon, Hundreds of us acted in good faith, followed your race briefing, but were unable to run this morning because the traffic confounded our attempts to reach the event at Cheltenham Racecourse, with its “ample free parking”. My story is probably typical of those of many other frustrated, disappointed and…
As a child, I wasn’t much of a sportsman. Asthmatic, lacking in co-ordination, a bit scared of team games. But, in the last couple of years of secondary school, I did discover cross country running. And, when I was searching for a sport to do for my Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, I…