In this episode we discuss leadership succession planning and how primary schools can spot, develop and nurture the school leaders (and headteachers) of tomorrow.

Across two halves, the podcast speaks to four school leaders to find out how they spot, encourage and develop potential leaders in their schools and trusts.

We ask how we can talent-spot these leaders – what kind of leadership traits and characteristics are we looking out for in our teachers and school staff?

Then, once we have identified these potential leaders, how do we support them to hone their leadership skills and what processes and CPD should schools have in place to encourage and inspire them? How do you nurture leaders pastorally to keep them energised? And what makes for an inspirational mentor or coach who might inspire the potential school leaders of the future?

We discuss all this alongside lots of good examples and ideas from our guests’ schools and trusts.

With the numbers of pupils with SEN rising year-on-year, this episode offers advice for primary school leadership teams (especially SENCOs) about the effective management of SEN across the primary school.

Our expert panel begin by offering their principles of best practice for managing SEN.

We then discuss how can school leaders can best support their SENCOs and what SENCO need in order to be effective in their role.

We focus too on how SENCOs can best support teaching staff – what will empower teaching staff to identify and support pupils with SEN and where do the responsibilities of SEN lie between the duties of the SENCO and the duties of teaching staff?

We talk about who should be on the SEN Register and how this is best managed and we focus on the management of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), discussing some basic principles of good practice.

We finish the podcast with a focus on the most common SEN – namely autism and speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).

This episode has been kindly supported by our friends at Speech and Language Link.

In this episode we discuss how to deliver excellent and high-quality school food on a budget in your primary school.

We chat with two headteachers and the founder of the Chefs in Schools charity to explore ideas and options for how schools can deliver quality food experiences for pupils.

We ask how we can work with families to improve packed lunches and also discuss how we can raise money via our food growing and education initiatives.

We talk about what we can do to improve the take-up of free school meals, and we offer advice how we can deliver high-quality breakfast clubs that make a difference.

We discuss food education. What should we be teaching about food and how? What does a good food curriculum look like? And we consider the impact that high-quality school food can have for children and their attainment and wellbeing.