Boarding school trauma and "the myth of privilege” - a conversation with Chris Braitch

Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd The myth of privilege comes up. Wow, weren't you so lucky? Wow, that must have been amazing and uh For me, privilege is, you know, true privilege is being raised in it in in a loving home and uh in a community. But um, you know, that that wasn't my experience. Rethinking education.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Rethinking Education Podcast. Education's critical friend. Before we dive into today's conversation, I want to tell you about two really exciting things that are happening. First, it's a really exciting time for Oracy in education. Sixty years, six zero years after the word was invented, the importance of developing spoken language and listening skills is finally receiving the recognition it deserves.

The recent curriculum and assessment review has signalled an absolute step change in terms of ORACE. They're setting up a national ORAC framework and embedding an explicit focus on spoken language across the curriculum. Which is just amazing. We've been punching the air and doing cartwheels over at Orrissy Cambridge, and this has not come about by chance. This is the result of decades of sustained work by researchers and educators all over the world and throughout this country.

The history, though, of Orasy education is littered with well intended initiatives which faded. through poor implementation or through poor politics or whatever. We've been here before. This time, if Orasy is to become a permanent feature Of every child's education, we must ensure that the implementation is just as strong as the rationale for doing this in the first place.

And that is why at Orasy Cambridge we've created this program, a six part program for teachers, leaders and Orasy leads called Implementing Oracy. It's a combination of three different sets of ideas really. The research and evidence, which we're really strong on at Orissey Cambridge. practical ideas for how to implement Orasy in the classroom and Topsy Page will be leading on that, who has just written two books. She wrote a hundred ideas for the primary classroom.

and a hundred ideas for the secondary classroom around Orasy, which she co-authored with Alan Howe. That one's coming out early next year. Um this will be based at Hughes Hall at the University of Cambridge. Six sessions across six months from January to July 2026. Four of those sessions are at the uni and then two of the sessions will be remote sort of check-ins. And we've got a real focus on three key areas, inclusion, assessment, and impact.

The three things that schools tell us that they want to want to get right most frequently. The early bird deadline. Is this Friday the 21st of November? Um which gives you a whacking great reduction on the full price. But if you hear this episode after that deadline has passed, then just drop me a line anyway and I'll see what we can do. If there is still availability on the program, which is not guaranteed, but if there is, Then we'll see what we can do.

We have some amazing speakers lined up, including none other than Neil Mercer, who literally wrote the book on Orosy. I've got it right there. If you haven't read that, then I strongly recommend you do The Transformative Power of Finding Your Voice. There's a link in the show notes with all the details and booking.

information. So that's implementing Orasy. Starts in January. You can book up until as as well, for as long as we've got places available. But that early bird deadline is this Friday, the twenty first of November.

Next, the Making Change Stick. Oh my goodness. Right. So this time last year, the book Making Change Stick had gone off to the publishers. and I was working like the clappers trying to get this online professional learning suite, all of these resources available for people for when the book launched in January.

And then January came along and that deadline just simply whooshed by at pace and I was not even remotely close to meeting that deadline. And that is because It's a little known fact that making an online course is the hardest thing in my humble experience, it's the hardest thing that it's possible for a person to do. It is I don't want to labor this point too greatly, but it has been absolutely

brutal getting this thing over the line. And so January came and went. And then what happened was that I was invited to take part in this insanely exciting project with the Welsh government around learner effectiveness. which pretty much eclipsed everything for this year, including my ability to finish that course.

And so I now have the situation where schools have been writing to me saying, When is this gonna be available? We're ready to go. I have schools that have paid me paid me their hard earned money, taxpayers' money, to Create this thing that has not been created yet, to provide something that has not yet been created. And so I promised those schools.

I will get the phase one stuff ready by October half term, which was two weeks ago, and I hit that deadline, and the rest of the stuff will be available by january twenty twenty six. and so to hold my feet even more firmly to the fire, And in response to s an article that I read that said it's a really good idea to offer people a whacking great discount on Black Friday.

Um so we've put together this deal where you can access the whole program as and when it's available. So the first third of it is available to go right now. as I say. And so between now and Black Friday, which is Friday the twenty eighth of November, you can get a thirty percent reduction off a three year whole school license that gives you full access to this program.

for everybody at your school and there's thirty different chapters with a facilitator guide, facilitator slides, there's a playbook, there are videos, there's exercises, quizzes. This is why it's been such a killer to make this thing, but I am really proud of it. And the reason that I've made this is because there is only one of me, right? And there is such a there are five million schools on this planet.

and every one of them needs to learn about implementation and improvement science. And you will not get this information anywhere else other than my book.

And books are great, but they're not really great learning devices. It's just a static thing that you read in a linear way. And this is much more interactive. And this program is designed for teams in schools to work their way through applying these ideas to a real world change initiative and if you implement this full program and it does not bring about lasting improvement.

In terms of pupil outcomes at your school, we will refund your subscription in full. That's how confident I am that these ideas. when implemented correctly, when implemented faithfully, if you go through the programme and implement these ideas, you can't go wrong. Seriously, you you can't go wrong. So Again, there's a link in the show notes um with all the information. And that's it, that's all of the selling stuff.

So let's dive into today's episode. This one is a bit different. I've gone rogue, as you can see, my usual co-pilots, the real David Cameron, is is absent today. Um and that's because this is a just a one-off conversation, a crossover conversation with Chris Brach, where we interview one another.

Chris, if you have not come across his work before, is the founding director of an organization called Seen and Heard, a really interesting not for profit which supports the well being of people who have been through the private school system

many of whom have experienced institutional neglect, emotional harm, or abuse. Chris himself was sent to boarding school at age seven, And in this conversation, he talks really openly about what that was like and crucially what Chris calls the myth of privilege, the idea that go being sent away to these elite institutions is somehow a privileged position.

He says like that's really n that's really not what privilege should be defined as. Because as soon as you mention boarding school or private school, people sort of assume that you've had an easy an easy ride. But that's not often the case. Chris's story and the thousands of stories of the people who he now supports tells a very different story.

And so Chris tells this very personal s tale about how after twenty years working in in sales and marketing, this all came to a head and he had a bit of a breakdown, or as he beautifully reframes it, a breakthrough. And through lots of coaching, through men's groups, through some deep emotional work, Chris discovered a new sense of purpose and he now works as an emotional health coach and a leadership coach and he is doing incredible work trying to change the system.

Both from the inside and from the outside, I suppose, said So we talk about things like trauma and hypervigilance and strategic survival personalities. It's quite a heavy episode. We also talk about why the education system continues to locate the problem in the child rather than recognizing that perhaps the The system could do with changing a little bit.

We also talk about my stuff a bit. We talk about the learner effectiveness program that I just mentioned that I've been developing with the Welsh Government. We talk about all that stuff about slice teams, implementation science, why top-down reforms so often fail. We talk about ORC, spoken language, AI, you name it, it's in here. Um it's a very, very full, wide ranging conversation. It is a deeply

human conversation, at times a challenging conversation, but ultimately I feel a hopeful one as well as honest and and heartfelt. I found it very moving in places and I hope that you do too. So let's get into it. I'll hand over now to my fascinating recent conversation with Chris Braich. Hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome everybody to the Seed and Head Podcast, a conversational series. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. James Munyan and we'll be doing things a little bit differently today. So we're going to be sharing this podcast space. ac yn ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud Um so first though I'd like to introduce Dr James Mannion.

He's an educator, researcher and change maker who's rethinking what education can be. James is the founder of the Rethinking Education Podcast movement, which brings together educators, parents and young people who are passionate about transforming our school systems for the better. He's the co author of Fear Is the Mind Killer and Making Change Stick a practical guide to creating lasting change in education.

James also leads the Learner Effectiveness Programme in partnership with the Welsh Government, and he's a key voice in the Orrissey movement through his work with Oresy Cambridge. Whether it's supporting schools to embed evidence informed practice, championing student voices, or shaping national education policy through the Education Policy Alliance, James is helping to build a more human centered, equitable approach to learning.

I'm really excited to dive into all of this with him today. Welcome, James, and thank you. Yeah, thank you very much for having me, Chris. And to and and yes, it's I'm very intrigued to see how this plays out. I've never really come across a podcast where like people just like interview each other and switch halfway. Um it seems like a very sensible thing to do, but we'll we'll see how that plays out. Um so so should I introduce you for for the benefit of our listeners? Sounds great, thank you.

So Chris Braich is a father of three. He is also a partner to a wonderful girlfriend, as well as a surfer, a musician. We should talk about music at some point. A coach and a founding director of the not-for-profit Seen and Heard, an organization which supports the emotional well-being of ex-pupils of boarding and independent day schools and their families. A topic that's come up a few times on my podcast, but I'm really interested to to to hear more about that.

Chris has found his calling now supporting others, use utilising his diverse life experiences and professional skills learned over a twenty year career in sales, marketing and management at some of the world's largest food companies. And he's come to understand that where your greatest wound lays is where you can find your gold and your gift to the world. That's super interesting. I wanna hear more about that.

His difficult life experiences and ongoing journey with challenging mental and physical health are now opening new doors and conversations in his personal and professional life, and he feels ready now to step into his purpose. that he feels has been he's been training his whole life for. So yes, I'm I'm uh I'm on the edge of my seat, or I would be if I wasn't at a stand up desk. I'm on the edge I'm on tiptoes, let's say.

Rydyn ni'n ei wneud. Rydyn ni'n ei wneud. Rydyn ni'n ei wneud. Rydyn ni'n ei wneud.

and how their life has been to bring them to the work they're now doing. So if you could just give give me a bit of a taste of how life was for you when you were growing up and kind of what shaped the experiences, a few of the experiences perhaps that shaped kind of how you feel so passionately about education and the work you're doing.

Mm. Interesting. Yeah, you know, I've asked this question to so many people over the years. I always do this like educational biography thing and no one's ever asked me for my one, so thank you for that. So I'm from up north. I'm from Lancashire originally and um I went to like Catholic state schools. So um Uh they were quite weird in their in their Catholic way, you know. Um my sixth form college was um populated by lots of nuns who sort of seemed to hover around in dark corridors

Which is often a bit spooky. Um it was c sort of Pleasant enough. Like it wasn't horrendous. There was Bit of bullying and stuff at school, but like nothing crazy. I remember just feeling quite disengaged from it. I didn't really relate to what I was being being taught or I didn't really develop any particular passions. I just wanted to get out of Berry was my main aim. And so I went travelling when I was eighteen.

uh to Australia and Southeast Asia and um And then lots of the people that I'd I'd I'd sort of already booked my place at uni and so I kinda came back and went to uni, but lots of the people who and moved to Brighton at the first opportunity. And then all I wanted to do was just write poems and and write songs. And so I and and obviously I had to earn a crust, but I wanted to do jobs that didn't occupy my mental

I didn't want to have to think about other people's things. So I did basically like manual labour type stuff. For most of my twenties I was like a gardener, green keeper on golf courses, builder's laborer and stuff.

um and did lots of that and then had had a really weird um sort of twist where I was I w had just been fired f from being a a builder's labourer. I wasn't a particularly good one. Um And then I got offered a job at Harvard Medical School, which was quite weird,'cause when I was at uni, my brother, who's older than me, uh was was working in a lab at UCL and the guy who ran that lab

had since relocated to Harvard. And so I might be the only person in the world I suspect I am the only one who's gone from being a fired builder to to working in a r like really cutting edge neuroscience lab at Harvard Medical School. Um and they offered me a PhD, but I didn't actually fancy it. I'd seen quite a lot of people go through that process of becoming a scientist and they didn't

look particularly happy. There's lots of uh issues with that with that line of work. And I d the the science itself, I wasn't really into it particularly. Um and so I came back and sort of had a bit of a m early life crisis. Cycled to Morocco by myself and then figured out that I wanted to be a teacher really quite quickly. It didn't take long to think about it.

um and came back and signed up to become a teacher. Um and and I always sort of wanted to v actually from the outset to change the education system. I could see that it was not ideal from the outset, that it wasn't setting people up for success. And if anything, it was compounding their problems and making them feel bad about themselves. Uh not in every case but in many cases and I still basically hold to that analysis.

Uh and so right from the outset I was sort of interested in doing research and trying to investigate this and and and uh and agitate for change. And so I taught for like ten years, twelve years. And now I work as a freelance educator. uh and teacher trainer and general sort of adjutant writing blogs and organizing conferences and I run this think tank called the Education Policy Alliance and we um try to try to um

shift the dial on what's happening, which is actually a really really hard thing to do, I I'm discovering. But um but you know, we're making inroads in in various ways.

Thank you so much, James, for giving us kind of a whistle stop tour through the early years and and shaping you and and then that that exploration to to uh to get on the bike and and find your calling to education. So yeah. Uh your work now in um that you're doing, uh particularly with the Rethinking Education podcast.

um uh is how I came to to know your work. And um I was also speaking to to Joe Symes at Progressive Education. Oh yeah. Uh who's wonderful and has given us great guidance at Seaman Heard. So she said, look you See if you can get a conversation with with James because he's he's he's going in the right direction. He's one of the good guys. So so thank you. Uh how did Rethinking Education come around? The podcast itself. Mm.

It's a while ago now, probably five years or maybe five and a half years I think since it started. So it's not I uh it's not that easy to remember. I think that like part of it was that I was just encountering all these amazing people in my work. um as a as a education advisor. Um and I sort of just thought like some of them were just like unsung heroes and I really wanted to be able to shine a spotlight on on some of those people.

And and also I wanted to sort of to to try to prise open the Overton window a little bit. It feels to me like you know, twenty sort of twenty twelve, twenty thirteen was when I sort of started really getting into um blogging and reading about what was going on and Twitter was you know, like edgy Twitter was just sort of starting to take off.

Something that's now died a very, very I'm actually very very grateful to Elon Musk for killing my addiction to Twitter. Uh just stone dead. I've got half my life back. Um but Uh all all this amazing sort of you know blogging and sharing of sharing of good practice and so on was happening, but it felt to me like it was

It was a bit narrow. It was literally just that. It was like sharing of good practice. It was like, Oh, here's a resource for how to start a lesson or whatever. And some of these wider questions that that people were writing about a lot in the sixties and seventies with books like you know, like The Failing School and The Underachieving School and de-schooling society and what have you, people were asking big questions about schooling and what this is doing to people, both positive and negative.

And it seems to me that some of those questions haven't actually been laid to rest. I think that we need to ask some quite searching questions about what we're doing. Um, and so I um Yeah, I wanted to try to sort of to broaden the conversation around education. uh and to yeah, to start having to start entertaining possibilities about, you know, another other other ideas that we could maybe

explore together. Thank you. And it's it's a fantastic podcast for for anyone that hasn't come across it. Do go search it up um on YouTube, other platforms. But um what you know it

hearing from you, a lot of it was just to to sort of bring out these unsung heroes to to sort of hear from uh to sort of shine a light on some of these great conversations you were having. What w what were the kind of themes um the frustrations, the stuff that was coming out from those conversations that you really wanted to capture um around, you know, rethinking education.

I think it's it's you know, it's funny, it's often parents and carers who who come to me with with like long emails of like the describing some very harrowing tale of like the prob like like the difficulties that that either they faced or that their children are facing or both. And they often talk about like like they use the language of like feeling embattled and that they're having to fight for their child.

Often it's just kids that just don't fit in the mainstream and and that's a swelling number, right? We've got over two million persistent absentees from school out of only nine million kids, so over twenty percent. Yn yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw. Mae'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud.

with uh where we we had about a hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty parents, mainly parents, responding to this survey and we were just asking about mental health and well being and we didn't really ask questions about curriculum, but curriculum came through really loud and clear in the responses and they were like

What is this arcane like thing, that this set of ideas that uh that you're sort of force feeding our kids and that they don't get any choice over what they learn about and they're not able to pursue their own interests and there's so much that's really, you know, we we might consider with our teacher hat on to be perfectly valid, you know, really interesting areas for exploration that are just not up for discussion in schools, you know. Um and so, yeah, that comes up a lot.

Um The forgotten third as well, this this idea that that you know, that one third of kids essentially leave school branded a failure by the exam system is um just a quite a deep structural issue which is not okay at all, is it? Like we we need to think we we don't need to fail one third of kids in order for the successes of other kids to mean something. Um so that comes up a lot.

Um and then the other thing that comes through a lot is just all of the amazing things that are already happening within the system. Like there's there's no shortage of brilliant practitioners working within the constraints of the existing system, whether that's in the state system or independent or elsewhere. who are doing wonderful things, you know. And so there's a lot there's lots of upsides to these conversations as well.

Mm. Well thank you, James. Yeah, it's really, really powerful work. I think one of the most important things I heard there was just how many how many good people and how many good things are happening in the system.

But it's the system if you like, the institution lies system part of it that is it is often tying their hands or suppressing that creativity or that drive to to listen to their to their hearts and and sort of, you know, uh for for the teachers to really follow what what young people need uh and want. Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd.

That's holding that in. Could you speak to that around around what you've come come up against, particularly with the Education Policy Alliance or or your other work? um uh trying to change the minds of the policy makers. Yeah, yeah. So yes, absolutely. We often sort of like th there's this phrase that people often use that we locate the problem in the child, right? So so um you know, yeah, if if a child is behaving in a challenging way if they're not attending school

if they're not succeeding uh in whatever way, it's often like, well, there's something wrong with the child and so we need to diagnose them and label them and perhaps put them on some medication and do some sort of intervention. You know, we use the language of interventions all the time, don't we?

um in education, which is what you do to a drug addict. It's like it's as though there's something that's a problem in the child and we need to intervene in their development and sort of patch them together. And it's all done in with the best of intentions, right? Like the road to hell is paved with good intentions. ac mae pobl yn gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio

Th I think that that links to the accountability system as well. Like we have this very sort of high stakes approach to accountability, on whichever way you look at that, whether it's offstead, whether it's um, you know, teachers have being performance managed and some in some cases having performance related pay.

obviously exams and testing and what have you and it's all done again with the best of intentions and we want to have metrics that we can improve to you know, to show that things are getting better and what have you. But all of that translates into just like additional pressure to perform on everybody, on head teachers, on senior leaders, on classroom teachers.

on parents, you know, to enforce the line and to, you know, to get their kids into school and doing their homework and stuff. And of course on young people. Um and then your second part of your question you were asking about about like sort of working with with with in policy to to try to shift the dial on this stuff.

And there's there's this one piece of work that I've been doing recently with the Welsh government around learner effectiveness. And this is really about just like broadening the scope of what we consider to be relevant like educational um activity, I suppose. And so

So like have we we've developed this model of learner effectiveness that's like that's got these six domains. So we talk about physical well being. Is the young person looking after themselves physically? Are they getting enough sleep? Often that's not the case. Are they eating a healthy diet? Often, you know, they're diskulling a g a liter can of monster on their way into school rather than having something like porridge.

Um do they understand how to use their bodies, you know, um, you know, as a tool for self regulation, as a tool for for overriding your nervous system and, you know, wiggle your toes, bring your bring yourself down into your body as a way to override your nervous system. breath work is hugely powerful. So there's lots going on in physical. And we have like emotional emotional literacy, emotional well being.

But the habitual domain, like habit formation, building up like hell healthy habits and also dialing down less healthy habits, helping kids to learn how to deal with this crazy technology, for example, that we're all wrestling with. Um relational learning.

How you relate to yourself? Like do you like lots so many people carry around like negative self talk. They beat themselves up all the time and they're like, You're stupid, you're ugly, you're unpopular, no one likes you, you'll never be good at maths or whatever it might be. And Often people really believe that and but actually it's just a bit of script, isn't it? It's like a just an unhelpful bit of script. Somebody probably once said something to you.

Or you had a bad experience and you just in you just absorbed it and you were like, Yes, that is me. I'm I'm rubbish. Um and you you carry that forward. But when people come to realise that that is just a piece of script and actually perhaps they can overwrite it, they can hack their brains and write some new piece of code and maybe step into some different story and and make that their story.

Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd I think that's absolutely the role of educators, to help people to become... more fully themselves, more at ease with themselves to develop more self awareness, self belief. and to develop themselves in these other areas as well as cognitively. So that was there were the first four the first four domains, physical, emotional, habitual, relational. The fifth one being cognitive.

And then if you picture those in a th they're they're like five wedges of a circle and then around the around the outside we have the sixth domain, which is like a ship's wheel, the navigational level, which is like where are you now in relation to any of that stuff. Where do you want to be and how might you get from A to B? And the idea is that the child is standing at the helm of that ship, um, you know, steering themselves towards, you know, the the kind of person that they want to become.

And this has been so so we've developed all these resources around this model. We've got seventy two strategies. 12 in each of those six domains practical strategies each of them takes about 15 or 20 minutes to teach and we've got a lot of other supporting resources and there's a professional learning program for teachers and leaders and support staff And to their credit, the Welsh Government have really gone for this and we we've we're rolling this out I'm doing the fifth.

in in a series of six implementation webinars this afternoon. And then from September this is rolling out across the country.

Um and it's initially aimed at fourteen to sixteen, although some schools are already dropping it down to year seven, say, but I think the next thing is to think about tran like transitions and other figuring down right the way down to early years through to from like three to nineteen, we want to have a shared language of of human development, you know, that includes cognitive stuff but also includes this broader this broader idea of of um

You know, helping people become more fully themselves, as it were.

That's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing um sharing about that. So that's the learning effectiveness programme with the Welsh government. And along my sort of I I'm I'm not from an education background as as you as you read out in the bio, but on my um and uh had a big change in in policy uh a number of years ago now which has helped lead Scotland in a more trauma informed, you know, child centred uh um way. Um so it it feels to me

Is England a little bit stuck stuck in the past? Is it is it wedded to something or is it just waking up a bit now? Yeah, so yeah, it's really interesting. We did I did a podcast recently called The Four Nations and we had people from each of the four and I was representing England as it were. Um yeah, so i you saw like there there's so many different levels on which you can

analyse what's happening educationally. Um and so absolutely in terms of trauma informed practice I think Scotland is leading the way. Um but also Um, it's quite widely acknowledged, I think, that there's a big review going on at the moment of the curriculum for excellence, as they called it in Scotland, which turned out to not particularly be that excellent th like in terms in terms of literacy and numeracy and so on.

Um and I think that there's some concern in Wales'cause the Welsh model is quite closely linked to the Scottish model. uh some of the the authors of those two approaches were the same. But I think that one thing that sets the Welsh model apart is this focus on learner effectiveness, is this focus on broader uh personal development.

There there are th lots of there are lots of people that I'm in touch with, school leaders and teachers who are leading the way on this stuff, who are doing things um that are really forward thinking in terms of like play based learning um being extended right the way up uh in through through primary schools.

schools that are like getting rid of desks and chairs and sitting in rows and they've got the kids, you know, sitting on beanbags and cushions and actually working really well and b re you know, because they can regulate themselves physically, their behavior their behaviors, you know, massively improved.

because of that. Um and there are loads of examples of of schools doing really forward thinking stuff. And so I wouldn't want to sort of to um to paint with a broad brush and to say English schools are behind the curve.

Uh,'cause I don't think that that's true. But s I think perhaps in terms of national policy, like th there's been this since twenty ten, since the coalition government came in and the Gove reforms, there was this big move away from uh from a ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod o ddod It was absolutely brilliant, a level two OCR course and it was about teaching kids how arguments work.

you know, wh how how you can what what what like is an assumption, what's a s uh an intermediate conclusion and a final conclusion, and how can you analyze arguments to tell whether they're faulty or not? Logical fallacies and ymwneud â phobl sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n

Such a really, really good qualification and it was just binned like'cause it was like it wasn't about knowledge. It wa actually was about knowledge, but it wasn't like a body of subject knowledge in the traditional sense. It was it was seen as somet it had the word skills in the title and so it went on the bonfire along with hundreds of other qualifications

has just completely withered on the vine in England and it's thriving in other countries and, you know, internationally. I do lots of work internationally. Um and yeah, so England, I am I am happy to paint with a broad brush on the in terms of national policy. This knowledge rich stuff, I think that there's been some really interesting gains there. I think that we had lost sight of knowledge, you know, there was that famous

uh the book by Michael Young Bringing Knowledge Back In. I think that that had to happen. I think that things went a bit woolly and a bit a bit sort of nebulous for a while there under in some of the new Labour um policies in the sort of ear early two thousand. But um I think we've made that point now. Like we've we've got our house much more in order with regard to a knowledge rich curriculum and sequencing, you know, um, knowledge and what have you.

this other stuff is really important and all of these issues that we're seeing, um You know, there was a recent study that found that like children in England are twice as likely to say they dislike school now as they were eight years ago.

plus the absentee crisis, plus behaviour, plus mental health and well being, teacher recruitment and retention, you name it, misogyny and sexual abuse, like there is no shortage of very, very serious, deep rooted and widespread problems um because of the way that the system is currently configured. ond systems can be reconfigured, so that's what we need to do.

Thank you so much. And is that very much linking into your work with the Education Policy Alliance, the EPA? And and w what are you what are, you know, policymakers and and campaigners, you know, what do they need to do to really connect with with students, with with frontline workers, um, and and start to make things move in the right direction?

Yeah, so so yes, it really does link with the with the education policy alliance. And so so the the other big piece of work that I've done in recent years is around implementation science and improvement science. Um and I published a book earlier this year called Making Change Stick, as you mentioned earlier. Um and that started ten years ago when I was when I just stumbled upon this conference that was about implementation science and it absolutely blew me away.

And I could see that this was absolutely what what we need'cause so many so many improvement initiatives are launched and so few of them actually improve anything. Um and everybody knows this and that's true in schools, it's true in politics, it's true in in business, in healthcare. Um, it's very, very common that we uh that we implement these change initiatives that don't actually improve things.

Um and I think that one of the major reasons for that is that we default to top down change. Like we just have a s this pyramidal structure but this assumption. It's like people very rarely even question it. The sort of the myth of the heroic leader who's gonna s sort of save us all from ourselves and so we have senior teams in schools, you know, NHS directors and clinical leads in in in healthcare. Of course, like cabinet ministers and what have you in politics.

Um and sometimes top down change is good and it's helpful to have some a small number of people with their hands on the levers of power, but it shouldn't be the only approach. And so one thing that I borrowed from the health literature and work that I've been doing recently in schools

is using slice teams where you take a cross section through the organization and you get representatives of people at different strata, if you like, for differ different levels of that of that little ecosystem. So in schools we might have kids, parents, on a on a team looking at behaviour as well as, you know, middle leaders, senior leaders, head teachers

early career teachers as well as experienced teachers and so on. And it's not just a consultation exercise. You actually you get those people sitting around a table for for a period of time looking at what the problem is and how to implement and then evaluate that change and sort of tweak it over time.

And it's really effective. And that's that's sort of the DNA of the Education Policy Alliance. So we are a very diverse group of all of those people that I just mentioned: classroom teachers, school leaders, um policy people, um, ed sites. What have you? People like me. Um and that kind of inclusive decision making is really powerful. A, because you just get make better decisions because you've sort of looked at it through all of these different

perspectives. And also when you when we you're doing this within an organization, you really get buy-in from people because they this is not just like the usual being told what to do by somebody with a clipboard and that's sort of just goes against human nature, doesn't it? People don't like being told what to do. Um and so really come with you'cause they can see that they are being ris respected and listened to and represented in the decision making process and so

Um it's a very smart way of going forward. And so in answer to your question, what can people do? Get into slices, just like organized slices. People are really up for it. Um, there's a bit more to it than just getting into a slice. I suppose this is the bit where I plug the book. Oh, you could probably find like like stuff on my on my blog um that um explains how Slice teams work. I've I've got a couple of substacks, one called Rethinking Education and one called Making Change Stick.

rhaid i talk about the slice team stuff more. Can I just share one example, actually? I interviewed, there's a headteacher called Colvan Atwal, who's a headteacher of two schools in Essex. uh a slice team in his school. So they were a rights respecting school and they had a slice involving a kid. uh of of year three and she she she spoke up and she was like the problem with this is that like when a supply teacher comes to our school and that happens quite often

they don't know that we're a rights respecting school and those so they don't speak to us in the way that other teachers do. And so we need to educate those people. And so she was like, Let's make a leaflet and we'll just like we'll just inform people so when they come to the school

You say, Okay, here's what you need to know about a rights respecting school and the children have rights here, you know, they they get to have their voice heard. And so, um and it's a beautiful example of, you know, somebody age five or six. Making a really sensible, practical suggestion for how we can, you know, improve things at the school. And so that kind of inclusive decision making is super powerful.

Mae'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw. That that that's all all we did. So when every time you were bringing a product to market or you were putting together you were put together a cross functional team from with different different from different parts of the organisation. For the exact reason is you need someone from the factory floor to tell you, look, that's all lovely a marketing speak or or manager, you know, sort of

um corpo boardroom nonsense, but that's not actually going to work on the floor. It won't it won't it won't stack up and this is why. So I think it's great that it's really cutting through now to to education and to different environments. Yeah and then to h to be it's very moving to hear of a young person uh having their rights respected for a start and then actually feeling that they could speak up and being included.

Absolutely. It's funny th like it's often in business like'cause businesses can't afford to to not make smart decisions, right? And so like lots of these ideas that are in that making change stick book are widely used in business. Um but just not so much in the public sector it seems.

Um so yeah, like comms planning. You know, like how how much of a bread and butter issue is comms planning? And like in almost every school that I go into and I sort of say, like, do you have a comms plan? And they go, What's a comms plan? And you're like, How are you organizing like running a school of like t two thousand people without a plan about how you're gonna what you're gonna communicate and how and through which channels and so on? Like

It's just mad that we're not doing that. And I was on a podcast on an education podcast recently and this came up and they were like, Oh, that sounds a bit corporate. You're like Right. Well corporations make like you know, like r run well, don't they? Because if they don't then they go out of business and so maybe maybe it's okay to be a bit corporate if it if it means becoming m like less dysfunctional. Yeah, I think there's so many linings from sort of...

from both both sides, both business and s and state systems. Something we obviously that that's a part of the conversation for for me that we touched on was um this kind of divide, particularly in in the in in the UK around private and and state education. Um c can you can you see a convergence of those at any point towards a more sort of human centered approach? Or are they just kind of you're either w in one camp or the other? Yeah.

Yeah, you do see yeah, you so so that so there are there are like there are there are partnerships, right? There are lots of examples of of schools in the independent sector working closely with with uh colleagues in state.

I'm really interested in in working with both and so th these resources that I mentioned earlier that we've developed with the Welsh government, we're currently putting together an international steering group of people from all sectors primary, secondary, independent, state, you know special schools, pruse, whatever, uh alternative provisions. Um, to think about how we can apply these these um ideas in different settings.

Um and I mean I'm keen to do more of that of that kind of work. Like th there is a there is a very deeply divided system. There is an interesting piece. I think the I think Melissa Ben might have written a piece in The Guardian. Around or it could have been Fiona Miller, was one of them. Um, around about the time of Brexit. uh and they were talking about the you know, this divided country has its roots in a divided education system.

Um and it's hard to it's hard to shake that, isn't it? Like some of the schools that I've worked with have been you know in the independent sector and some of them look like castles, right? So like you know, I was I worked for for um um for a while with Dulich College for example, where Nigel Farage famously went. Um and it looked

like something out of a yeah, it's like a it looks like a stately home or something. It's like magnificent looking building and and it's really close to like Brixton. So you sort you know, there's some some areas of of London that have

you know, got some really quite deep uh levels of deprivation. And you sort of turn the corner from from, you know, driving down some uh street where you perhaps wouldn't want to be after dark So like all of a sudden it just opens out and there's all these big trees and you just this leafy and you know, if you were a kid in the back of your parents

four by four or whatever. You know, like going to school and you're you're like looking at all of this stuff and people queuing up at a bus stop, something that you've never had to do. And then you go to school in this

stately home. It's you know, you can see how that child is going to grow up just thinking, like, I'm not like them You know, the we are not the same. Like this is like I live in this rarefied world. Um And Uh and you can see those very, very deep levels of division are sown by that by that state by that state versus private sector.

And I think in an ideal system you wouldn't have that, right? Like you wouldn't have that division. It's difficult to see how we would get there from from where we are. Um,'cause it's a it's just a complicated Issue, isn't it? Um and for a while it was recently like Labour were talking under Corbin, Labour were talking about abolishing private schools, weren't they? I don't think that I don't think that that's probably gonna happen.

But yeah, to the extent that we can make things more equitable, so much the better. Thank you. part of our work at Seam and Heard is to to try and bring some of these practices you're talking about um in Wales, we talked about in Scotland, trauma informed schools or emotion coaching, um or any incredible sort of progressive stuff you've referenced. Try and bring that more and more into the independent Saturday morning school.

Um and there are many who are doing a great job being quite progressive. There are still many that are the stately home that uh are wedded to tradition and um, you know, well being something for the prospectus really rather than anything else. But um Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd

largely of course the people that go into government and the judiciary and the press are from the private sec private school sector, particularly boarding schools massively overindexed in those areas. So Um possibly that the hierarchy that uh I was certainly fed with at boarding school shows up in our country. Yes. Yes it does indeed. And that that feels like a neat segue into into talking about Yoga. Um and so so shall we switch at this point?

Yeah, that was good. I think the the only thing that I was desperate to to know a little bit about was Orasying, Orsee Cambridge. Oh yeah. Because it it's not something that yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw Yeah, sure. Yeah, so so my PhD um was supervised by a guy called Neil Mercer, Professor Neil Mercer, who's quite well known in the education world and his work has been around this word oracy, which was invented in the sixties.

by a British researcher called Andrew Wilkinson, and Wilkinson wanted to essentially give spoken language equal parity. to written literacy and numeracy, hence the inventing the word orisy, like literacy, numeracy, or see. Uh and for various reasons, like, you know, it's sort of come in and out of fashion a bit in education over the last sort of five or six decades as things tend to do. And at the moment

We're very hopeful. Like n like the Labour government prior to election, Starmer gave a speech where he said we're gonna have this big focus on Orasy. And now there's a curriculum and assessment review going through at the moment and in their interim report that they published earlier this year, Orasy was not mentioned at all.

Um so that was a little bit puzzling and quite concerning. Um and people who are in the know seem to be saying, Don't worry, behind the scenes things are happening and in the final report it will be reflected and we are still going in this direction. But we're all a bit on tensor hooks. Um and so I yeah, so so following my PhD I um was asked by Meal by Neil to join this group. This sort of a think tank study centre called Orasy Cambridge.

Yn ymwneud â 10 neu 12 ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol. Yn ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol. Yn ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol. Yn ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol. Um and yeah, we do and we deliver lots of training and consultancy. I'm doing this really interesting project with the National Gallery at the moment, a five year project, training up their gallery educators in

methods and techniques of how to use how to teach through spoken language. Um and um and it's a very powerful important lever, I think, that we have in term the going back to the equity thing, you know, the like one of the big things that we s that people often talk about, the difference between state schools and private schools, is just how confident

kids from private schools seem. How that sort of effortless the it's sort of like um self belief and verbal fluency and And it's just no surprise when you look at what happens in those schools where, you know, there was like a quote from from um a a previous headteacher of Eton and it's like boys are expected to to speak in every lesson. and they have debates, you know, the balloon debates and and whatever the other debates. They recently they recently built a new debating chamber at Eton.

um called Jaffar Hall and it's cost about twenty million pounds just this one room and it looks just like the House of Commons, it's just like rows of benches facing each other, this adversarial debating chamber. And they're literally role playing for when they get to run the country, you know.

Which is a good idea, you know, we should practice these things. But every kid in the country, every kid on the planet should be playing that game. Like we're not drawing yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n

Yeah, th just that just as a final word on that, that it really reminds me of uh a previous podcast guest who I mentioned to you earlier, John Higgs, who just said uh just like uh d uh two minutes of looking at what goes on in the average day in the House of Commons. tells you that there's something very seriously wrong with our private education system. Um is yes, it's a it's an astute observation, I think. Yeah, yeah, thank you.

the uh psychotherapist and author Nick Duffle who writes quite extensively about boarding school syndrome and related topics, his book Wounded Leaders, is a is a brilliant is a brilliant dive into into you know what what What occurred for those people who are now in the corridors of power military, clergy, politics, education, etcetera. Um and what what uh levels of experience and dissociation they will have gone through uh in in their in their early years.

To be able to then go out and kind of run a country for which they cannot possibly understand ninety-nine percent of the people that are in that country. Yeah. Well now we really are segueing into your bit. So so so let let's switch let's switch over now and I will uh as assume the the microphone. I will wield it uh more obviously. Um

So yes, so like the same question applies to you that you asked me earlier, just a sort of like a brief introduction into you and your life path and into the the work that you do now, if you will. Yeah, thanks, James. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, for me, the early year stuff was... Bumpy, it was difficult. Um I uh Yeah, my my mum had um emotional health, mental health issues, uh very bad postnatal depression. She she didn't actually want children.

uh, in the first place. And um and uh as a result she was sort of in and out of my life really in the first first five years with her own mental health problems. Um Dad very much did his best, but he had a um a business that he wa he was an engineer by trade, mum was a teacher, so we're kind of a uh lower middle class family I suppose you call it. Um uh but uh Dad's business was taking off. He he as an engineer he got into computers at the right time in the late seventies.

Um and you know he was he was very much focused on that. So I was kind of bounced around caregivers, um and uh with mum in and out, it was difficult. And when they finally divorced when I was five, um Uh it was it was a case of you know, there was only really one thing in the divorce settlement which was uh Chris Chris goes to goes to boarding school. Um and my dad had to pay for it. Ac yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw.

went eight to eighteen and was a product of the system. Uh everything you spoke about, incredibly good orator, um, public speaker, author, very smooth. And um I think my mum was uh grew up in a pub in Blackburn and um thought, yeah, I'll have some of that for my son, please, uh, because that looks like a good model and she knew she couldn't look after me health in a healthy way at home. So um I went to boarding school at seven. And uh yeah, my first school was

was was bleak, was cold, was hungry, was um, you know, the uh corporal punishment was still very much alive and well in the late eighties. Uh the private sector hung on to it for another ten years after it was uh banned, you know, in the in the States. Really? Oh gosh, I didn't realise that.

Yeah, they clung on to it, so spare the rod then spare the child. Um was it spare the rod and Save the Child, is it? Yeah, that's it. Sorry. It's not safe. There's very much um very much of that elk and um Uh you know the good things about it, the sports, as you said, the facilities, the rolling fields, the Rydyn ni'n unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw.

uh the children of missionaries, um people who are stationed overseas doing sort of state business if you like. And that's what a lot of people forget. You know, there is a there is Eat and there is the elite boarding school stuff. But you know, boarding an independent schools of such wide sector, state boarding. You've got um uh the kind of progressive yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r

you know, the the the kind of places where people will just put put away. Um uh so that's it's a really broad sector, but mine was kind of middle of the road. Rydw i wedi gweithio'r cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod y cydnod

even if if the if the child knows is going away to a boarding school cannot fully comprehend what that's going to mean. And so there is an abandonment from from all that they know at home. The bereavement uh the the sadness uh uh losing home, losing family, um, but not being able to express that in the boarding school environment. Crying isn't welcome, there's no one to speak to.

There certainly wasn't back then. Um captivity is okay, well this is it now for me. I'm I'm stuck, I can't get away. Um I'm gonna I'm gonna have to survive. And you build a strategic survival personality in order to do that. and which you'll see played out very well in the corridors of power. Um and then D's dissociation finally, which is at the point at which the child psyche is overwhelmed. Uh yeah. The child has to check out.

Um before I came home and uh sadly mum who'd been ill for a very long time, she died a year after I came home from boarding school uh of a brain tumour. Um And by that point I my my card was marked as far as drink drug um, you know, heavily dissociated panic attacks. a real struggle through teens. It was a really difficult start to life and what's challenging, particularly in the work I now do, is as soon as you say where you went to school.

the myth of privilege comes up. Wow, weren't you so lucky? Wow, that must have been amazing and uh For me privilege is, you know, true privilege is being raised in a in a in a loving home and uh in a community. But um, you know, that that wasn't my experience.

Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that man. That sounds that sounds rough for in all kinds of ways. Um I'm t I'm interested in like so it while y while you were experiencing this at school yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw I went to a mixed school, but I think we only had maybe four or five girls in my first school, and then in my second school there was probably thirteen forty and a very difficult experience for the girls as well being in a

Being in that environment. Yeah, yeah. That may perhaps we'll come on to that later on. Um,'cause like yes, some of the recent stuff around um, you know, the issues that were raised by adolescents and yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna.

Um so b yeah, but was it ever mentioned? Did you ever sort of talk to each talk talk to your your your peers at school and sort of say like This is rough or this is not or was it just a bit sort of we just trying to survive and sort of not really address what was happening. W do you do you remember any conversations of that nature? No, thank you James. Good question. I mean, I don't remember a lot. I mean, typical sort of dissociative memory.

lost from from my first thirteen years really. I've got a very, very patchy so I don't remember conversations, but I do know for a fact which is Once you're in a an institution like that, um it has its own language, its own code. It's like a cult. You're indoctrinated into this being the way things are. And you don't know any other diff you don't know any different.

So if you're being beaten for your own good to to show you what's right and wrong or if You know, um uh if the school week is eighty, ninety hours long and runs all the way through the weekend and two chapels on a Sunday and da da Just think that's how it is. You know, this is how my life is now and and everyone else seems to be rubbing along all right. And very importantly, this is something that did a real number on me, is if you were to complain, is the don't you know how lucky you are.

This is a great privilege, a great honour. And that creates a real double bind, which is if someone's comes through a you know a state care home

they're unlikely to be told how extremely lucky they are. More luck there's you know, there could be prejudice around those who found foster parents, those who've managed to stay with parents. Those you know, they they may be seen as the lucky ones. But if you're in a group home Mae'n'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd.

um or residential school, you may well get the do you know how hard I've worked, do you know how well how much we sacrifice for this? So and I think for me, between that from the home from home and in the school, this is the way we do things. No, we never spoke about about anything that I can remember. You just

survived. Right, right. And to what extent would you say that the problems that you experienced were related to the fact that it was boarding? Rydyn ni'n ymwneud yw'n ymwneud yw'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud?

Mm, yeah, thanks. That's something we look at a lot'cause it's seen and heard we we support well being of past and present pupils, but boarding and independent day schools. So people who've who've been through private day schools share a lot of the challenges that boarders did. And the biggest one, you touched on it over uh earlier is is is just timetabling and overwhelm and exhaustion.

You know, burnout is the biggest problem in the private sector of education, both for teachers and pupils. It is now and it was then. Um, you know, the school day is ridiculously long. Um so both both'cause I've been a day pupil and a boarder, I can s I can see it from both sides. And that was very much a commonality, as was the sort of strange language, the punishment It was all pretty much the same.

The boarding double down on top of that is the not being able to go home, is the captivity element, is the there's nowhere private in a boarding school. And a lot of the boarding schools didn't even have toilet doors. you bathed in public, if you like, with everyone else lined up, with a matron scrubbing your back, in a kind of an inch of muddy water, and then the toilets didn't have doors on them, so you couldn't go and cry in a toilet, you couldn't get away.

So that's very much changed now. You know, they go, Oh, we've we've got carpets now and we've got nice curtains and the food's great. I agree with that. But ultimately, if you can't get away and you've got no one safe to talk to, or even just to talk to and you've got nowhere t to to to be private.

the complex post traumatic stress, if you like, the the the uh inability to get out and get away and roll the stone back across and let your nervous system settle down, which we know is incredibly important. It wasn't there. So to to the letter, I've never met anyone who hasn't come out hyper vigilant. Because you have to be on it all the time, whether it's work, safety

Um or you know, academic sport, et cetera. There was there was no turning off. Right. And can you just expand on that hypervigilance thing? How how does that show up? Yeah, how does it show up? I mean the you know, I can speak to I because my my my experience with it and then there's my you know, my coaching work and the Seen and Heard stuff, but um you know ultimately It it's gonna open up the path to addiction.

Because if you are hypervisionant all the time your your nervous system gets wrecked. And to in order to disengage from that and and sort of quiet the the hungry ghosts inside as Dr. Gabal Mate talks about, you're gonna seek things. It could be behavioural like control. could be, you know, sex, it could be exercise, work, workaholism, it could be substances, uh, booze, drugs, etcetera. Um so that tends to be

V uh we you know, we as a population, if you like, massively overindex on those coming out into adulthood, ways of coping. Um and the hypervigilance, you know, illness. Early heart attacks, early cancer, etc. Um, that's how they're going to show up. But behaviorally in the world every day, that very strategic approach. to life. So you see it in our politicians. Everything is debate, everything is cut and thrust, everything is defend and parity and counterattack.

There's no heart centered this, there's no collaboration. I mean God you know, you you don't need that. It's not required. So um th th and the constantly being on. You know, there is almost no way to to quiet the m the thinking mind. And and most people with hypervigilance are effectively floating heads. You know, there's no connection to the body, to the earth around them, to community. It's just a sort of very strategic mind.

operating attack and defense through life. I see. Thank you for that. That's a very rich and vivid account. And so so so let's pick up your story. So so you said that your card was marked um when you left school and your mother died shortly shortly afterwards and you had like trauma essentially, like unresolved trauma that was going to play out your hypervigilant.

You mentioned like drinking drugs and things. I just wonder before I I want to get to the to get to the work that you're doing now with Seen and Heard, but could you just sort of chart the next bit of your journey as to as to um where th where that went and how this how this work came to take shape? Yeah, thanks James. Yeah, I mean for me the the first time I ever felt I had a home was at university. So I I got to uni somehow, I screwed up my A levels because I

drunk the whole time and I was uh having panic attacks by that point quite regularly. Um so I got to uni, but there I found a family of sorts, you know, a a home where I could live in. I love the guys that that I live with. Um and it was it was it was a good time for me. I was a mess. It's when I first got into counselling. I went to the uni counselling services and said that

you know, I'm falling apart, I'm having a breakdown. Um, mainly alcohol, you know, gambling, all sorts of other stuff. But I got through uni um just about and uh went out, didn't know what I wanted to do. There's no I still remember the careers advice at school gave me four options really, which was sort of military, clergy, educator

polit politics or so you know there's you've only got a few routes you're allowed to go from from these kind of schools. So um I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I ended up now looking back, having done a lot of h personal healing work and therapy, I basically did what tried to do what my dad did.

And ultimately I tried to make my dad proud. So I went into business because he was a businessman by this point. Um and uh went through, you know, said read in the bio twenty years of sales, marketing, um, uh some of the world's biggest sort of corporations, working my way up lot full of export school people, being very strategic. clawing their way to the top of the ladder. Um

you know, numbing the pain every night with gin and tonic and then getting up and rinse repeat the next day to climb the ladder and and step on anyone you can on the way up. So that that was very much me. I was pretty good at it for a long time. until uh, you know, finally got fed up um and started a consultancy business to help small businesses to grow, uh to use some of my skills and and started to get a bit more heart centred, a bit more compassionate.

I was breaking down at this point emotionally. You know, my um strategic survival personality, as Nick Duffle calls it, for for ex borders, was starting to break. And it always does at some point. Really, for most people, it'll be a divorce, it'll be a mental health or a physical health thing, it'll be a loss of a job, substance abuse, rock bottom. But at some point you're gonna go, God, you know, I've been operating on these stories, on these

uh, you know, this sort of ego trip um and I started to fall apart. So I had a breakdown about four years ago. Um And uh, you know, the healing work since has brought me to the work I do. Um but I got one thing really right in all of that carnage of booze and corporate climbing and and and getting very overweight and all sorts of stuff was that um you know, I got married, had had amazing children.

Um and although my marriage didn't didn't survive in the end, um uh uh after I had a son, Ben, who um uh very sadly died, um uh Between three and four years old. So it's three and six years old. Sorry to hear that. Absolutely awful. Devastating. And um, you know, at the time I was by that point I was brilliantly numb and you know, I was comfortably numb in the words of Pink Floyd. Um so I I sailed through dissociated got up parenting my other twins.

So I had twin girls whilst my son was dying and then I I you know threw myself into that and work and etc. And that set me up for for a breakdown, you know, in a few years to come. I was just burnt out. But um my girls uh, you know, are still with us and um I've I've done a lot of personal work to, you know, spend time with my son every day now and here and here. Um which is beautiful. But um yeah, that that sort of brought me to the work now. It was really the breakdown.

that made me realise uh I had something to offer uh to the world and that uh it wasn't worrying about my next promotion and um and uh you know trying to go on nice holidays and stuff like that. It's really interesting, isn't it? And th the idea of a breakdown, I don't want to necessarily dwell on this too greatly, but there's something about that word, isn't there, that sort of It seems to like it's what you do at the side of a road when there's like

s you know, smoke coming out of your engine and then somebody comes along with an orange truck and tows you to tows you to safety. But like human it's the human analogy, it's not quite the same, is it? Like like what what what form that takes? Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd

It's not a bad thing. Like it's it's something that really needs to happen. It's somehow like your sort of your true will or like there's some there's some part of you that is sort of like the weeds are growing through the concrete and finally th this edifice sort of shatters apart and And you there's some sort of some more sort of authentic version of yourself.

comes to the fore. I don't want to p polish it with too sort of like, you know, like rainbow coloured a paintbrush, but um w what what would you say about that?

Well uh James, I think that's one of the most beautiful ways I've heard it put. That was lovely, the the weeds going through the concrete. Um yeah, it's a breakthrough, it's a spiritual awakening, it's all of these things in my personal experience. Um but God w when you're going through it it's some people just don't make it out.

And and you know, suicide rates amongst the the the groups that we support are very, very high, way higher than the national average because it's some some of them don't make it out. Some didn't make it out of school. You know, they they killed themselves at school but um or or in the years since. But um I'm very, very grateful uh that mine was a breakthrough and I found the right coat. I found a guy called Piers Cross, who's quite big in boarding school.

Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. It's the universe provides magic stuff. But um he guided me through the last four years. Um uh a lot a lot of you know

Stuff I never thought I'd do. You know, proper sort of chanting in woods and doing a lot of men's work, uh, groups and um and a lot of emotional healing stuff. But uh Uh it's yeah, th th the breakthrough bit I definitely believe that Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni. Uh and it take uh in the place of those chunks it puts this veneer that you talked about, this sort of mark.

of how you should and shouldn't uh uh behave and speak and act. And to the point at which you get to whatever age it might be and it has to break at some point because it's it's nonsense and it's built on very, very shaky foundations. So I'm very pleased to have gone through my breakthrough. And now I don't have to waste the rest of my life.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And so so let's talk about seen and heard. So so what is this organization? Cymru, mae gennych chi wedi gweithio? Cymru, mae gennych chi wedi gweithio ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith ymwneud â'r gwaith. which is under two years ago. Um I didn't I didn't look at my

boarding school stuff. I didn't look at my early years stuff. I was in therapy for twenty years. talk therapy and I didn't go anywhere near it because of the strategic survival side y your your ego often will keep you away from the boxes that really need opening and the barriers and you know and sort of uh language the def the protectors and the defenders and all the people you've got up here keeping keeping you on the straight and narrow it would seem won't let you go there.

Um but ultimately I finally got to the point at which I went, going away at seven years old and not seeing the family very often and being in the this inst that can't be a good thing, right? That that that did something to me. Um and so when I started to explore that I ended up connecting with loads of others who had uh and particularly a a group of of people from one of the Facebook groups

And that ended up being the you know, the founding directors of Seaman Heard. And we came at it from the view of, you know, we've got to do something about this. Because the myth of the privilege bit, we're not recognised for support services as a group.

Um or you know everyone thinks we're we've got loads of money and we can just go and pay for ourselves. But actually there's so so many people who came through the system who've either been too sick to work their entire life or they had it and they lost. you know, they they had the job, they had the house, they whatever they and they just blew it up spectacularly. Self sabotage, addiction, whatever. So there needs to be a place where these people can go for support, emotional health support.

uh well being support that understands them and their experience and isn't going to judge them and call'em posh. And you know, even we went to funders around this and we heard was it was it therapy for posh people? Come on, you're supposed to be supposed to be a kind of aware funding organization. It's like, oh my God. So we're like, we're gonna have to DIY this because no one cares.

And we get why no one cares. You know, there may be a bit of a chip on the shoulder, but it's starting to go. Um but so we thought, well, we're gonna have to set this up um for sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n which is uh well being support for adult ex pupils and their families

That is free online sharing groups to be seen and heard in spaces where people can understand what they where they're coming from. It's specialist therapists because we deal with a lot of abuse. people who've been abused in their institutions and we deal with a lot of people with complex post traumatic stress.

neglect, abandonment, etc. So we've got specialists there and we've got the funding support programme for people on low and no incomes because we've got a huge amount of people who cannot afford any help. Um self help resources, et cetera. So we deliver that for adult services. Um and then the second thing that we do, which very much brings me into your world, is thought well If we're going to look after the present pupils, the current pupils, we've got to get into the school.

And there are some boarding and independent schools who are doing a great job. Yeah. But not as many as who are doing a great job as in the state sector, particularly perhaps Wales, Scotland, other areas, around well being and welfare and safeguarding. It's nowhere near good enough right now. It's better than it was.

There's not the state sanctioned you know, the institution sanctioned violence, abuse, neglect stuff that used to go on. It's warmer, it's fuzzier, it's cuddlier, but it's still burning teachers out, it's still burning kids out. Um and it's still not Focusing on the whole child, uh, the whole young person's learning experience and providing a supportive environment. So we work with schools.

uh or the ones that will speak to us, which is not enough right now, but we're we're chipping away um trying to implement progressive well being and welfare programmes for the schools. trauma informed schools, motion coaching, all the stuff that you talked about, working with the Welsh government around learning effectiveness and those sort of pillars of the body and mind learning how do people learn

um self-regulation, etc. That's all the stuff that I'm trying to to get into schools. That's the second part of what we do and then the third part is we campaign for improved legislation um for child sexual abuse. So we w we work with Survivors Trust and SPCC and others. We sit on the Act on Ixa panel um to try and get some change, particularly mandatory, effective mandatory reporting of child known or suspected child sexual abuse.

Um in regulated activities, so schools and institutions. But we've got a long way to go, although there is some little teeny Teeny sort of chinks of light now with the with the government starting to talk about implementing the twenty eight seven uh recommendations. So that's that's us in a nutshell. Sorry, just to just to clarify, did you just say that there is not currently mandatory requirement to report child sexual abuse? No. I'm slightly reeling from that.

That's not currently like a required thing. So it so if you if that happens and it is covered up, that's not a criminal offence. How what how does this play out? Well can you help me to understand the practicalities around it? Yeah, I mean it's um we're one of uh very few developed nations who don't have effective mandatory reporting in place.

Um and uh although the government have said they will do they will put mandatory reporting in, it's in train at the moment, as it was one of the twentix recommendations from years ago. Uh however what they're putting in is mandatory reporting like.

Which is if If a child um Discloses abuse, or you witness abuse and you're in a regulated profession profession, like you're a teacher or something like that, then you're now uh mandated to make a report um uh to you know the um local uh the laddo, the the local authority uh designated officer, etcetera, but it doesn't carry Uh a penalty if you don't.

And there isn't the uh the pro uh the um whistle blowing provisions and safeguarding in place for people who do blow the whistle on this sort of stuff. And most importantly, it doesn't include suspected abuse. So you as a teacher will have seen over the years in and thought this is not something's going on here for this young person at home, something's going on in the school, this isn't right.

particularly within the boarding and independent school sector in the past, the reputation of the institution was put at the top of the list. Uh abusers were moved from school to school with a reference just to get them off people's plates. Um and uh mandatory reporting, effective manager reporting is the only thing we can think of.

that says, No, no, no, if you know or suspect, you must report outside the institution, not inwards and upwards, where it will get blocked and the institution will be protected but outwards to the right authorities and Um, you know, action must be taken, or you risk a fine or a potential jail sentence if you do not report. But that isn't happening right now. Wow, I am

quite staggered by that. I just never assumed I've never really thought about it, but you just assume that that would be the case. Like it's absolutely baffling that that is not the case. Okay, so so let's go back to to education reform.

What would you like to see? You you're dead right. There's the whole thing about, you know, like people are falling in the river and you at some point you need to go up river and stop them from falling in, right? And so um what do you think needs to happen? Um in in education. And whether is that sort of in terms of like you talked a bit about some of the practices in schools, you know, running wellbeing programmes in schools and so on.

Is there anything like do you think for example that boarding should be outlawed? Like so we'd still have private schools but we shouldn't be you shouldn't be allowed to send a child away from their f their family of origin. mm at the age of seven years old. Like is what what would you s what what what are your um do you have any sort of hike hard asks if you like, that you that you're working towards.

Yeah, thank you, James. Yeah, I mean just to address the the boarding one, obviously w w in as an organization we are trying to work within the current system to improve things. And if you know we're we're in the shut'em all down camp, we can't get invited in and we can't help to change things for young people. And ultimately though, you will not find a developmental psychologist who thinks separating children from their families at an early age is a good idea.

So we I think we can we can hand on heart say that early years junior boarding is not good for children. except in the most extreme circumstances where they need to be removed from home for their own safety. And that's the same as in state care. Yeah. Yeah. So that's very much the tr the case. So most people would probably agree with that, you know, so boarding eleven, twelve and under is i is well and many th think in breach of European rights.

and um in that harmful for children. Um when you get to the teens, that's where more people mainly soften up about it. I still believe, you know, I've got thirteen coming on fourteen year old girls. I know what they're bringing home from school every day with the stuff that they're having to go through with friendships and pressure of exams, work and etc. I would not want my children going through that on their own in the institution. Um but

Bless you. And for for for many, they may start to make decisions that actually home is not working out for them and they start sort of drifting away and boarding in the late teens. is not going to be as harmful as is early years. Sick form boarding, particularly for things like people who want to do sp sports or military or uh music or dance, whatever it might be, or specialisms and things, or special educational needs.

you know, there isn't really any evidence that says boarding after sixteen is is going to be harmful. Many children will be ready for a move on pre university, whatever. So that's sort of my position on that. Um but whilst boarding exists, I need to make sure that those young people are safe and healthy. And that's the other part, you know, the big part of the work we're doing, which is what I want to see is a world where emotional education is as valued

So EQ is as valued as IQ, if not more so. And it's really not. We live in a left brain, IQ dominant society and the private sector is particularly yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw uh focused in this area. I mean PSHE for me is

a joke when I look at the PSHE curriculum and how it's being delivered and what's being delivered. Um and there as you said, w w what's the what what point are young people taught how to human? Um as far as their how how their emotions work, the connection between mind and body, self regulation, uh of emotions and um How to interact with each other, uh, how to be compassionate, etc. So these are the things that I believe have to come into our system so that

Ultimately we'll our education w will get better because stressed minds can't learn. Whereas at the moment they're just gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'n gweithio Yeah, capacity, if you like, for for solving the climate crisis or solving the issues in society. It's restricting that because it's keeping it too narrow.

So I think for me it starts with emotional education and valuing EQ. and putting in place, you know, you talked about breath work, meditation, mindfulness, um, uh, uh communications and compassion. Um And we're we're actually at the moment working on a compassionate leaders of the future programme to to create people who want to go out and change the world who are in a heart centred way.

Um and we're running that for for business leaders as well. Uh so um, you know, there's lots to be done, but ultimately I think a few simple changes to you know it's not we do all this stuff as a school and then we do well being which is what it is I believe at the moment it We're here for the well being of the child and we do all this other stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, got you. You should totally come to our event that we're running in Manchester in October. We're doing it on a as low cost it's an unconference. Um Uh on Saturday the eleventh. Do a little plug here. Saturday the eleventh of October in Salford um at a secondary school called um St Ambrose Cuthbert. And it's called Everybody Thriving um and um creating a culture of well being and love of learning in schools. Um and it's really about like where people are at now, like so like Um

you know, there's this there's this sort of like phrase that we've been using, we are the system. Like we are we are the system. The system is made of people and we're already in it. Like and there's loads that we can do. We don't need to wait for some well being bill to go through Parliament as it is currently in order for us to do things now that will improve our well being and those of the people around us.

Please please feel free. It's really really cheap to do to to join us. And you can also join remotely if you're if you're far away from Manchester. Uh there's a amazing person from Brazil who's going to um to host uh an online element to that. So we're gonna be bringing lots of voices together from around the world to

to have th exactly that conversation that you were just describing about making essentially making well being our North Star instead of exam grades, right? So like what how what what would the exam system look like if we m if we made the well being of of the people in it and also the people in the wider world happier and and more regulated and what have you.

Um so come along to that. And then so so we we should probably wrap up fairly soon and it's twenty twenty five and so no conversation is complete unless we've mentioned AI. And so um what where where does AI come to the come into this for you? Hmm, oh thanks James and uh yeah your event sounds fantastic and I'm definitely uh gonna be there. Um

AI for me I I uh because of all the emotional healing work and the standing in the woods barefoot and and you know, all this sort of stuff, I was very anti it for a long time. I thought, Oh technology, uh bring about our downfall, etc. I think I'd watched uh Terminator too many times as well and thought you know, sort of the machine the system was gonna come and k kill us. But um a great friend of mine who died uh about eighteen months ago very, very sadly, was

just the most beautiful man and the most incredible thinker in this area. He'd been with AI for years and he said to me, you know, not long before he died, that it was basically going to come here and say I said, Come on, man, that that's that's that's quite something to say. But I've come to believe he's right, which is that our disconnection from the earth and from each other and from ourselves is because we've we've got s way too far into a la kind of a left brain analytical learning

based world. Um and I believe AI is here to take the heavy lifting off on that and release us to do what we're supposed to do as humans, which is to connect uh and to, you know, spend our time largely with each other, with our families, with with um, you know, with our loved ones and not at work or at school or in an institution, etcetera I believe AI is going to help us do that. And I think it's going to help us solve the climate crisis.

Um and I think it's gonna uh be a part of our turning as a as a society, which I already see. It's been happening for, you know, thirty, forty years, it's moving in the right direction, it never moves fast enough, I get that. But if you stand back, go to a helicopter view and you look at how where we're going, I believe we're going in the right direction and I think AI is part of it. So

Not only does it help me every day at work now, um I i it's um I believe it's it's part of the future for for us as a as a as a human species. So yeah, thank you for us.

Yeah, thank you for replying. I I hope you're right. I'm not sure if I um Like I'm still quite agnostic on it. Um it's nice to hear I think I read lots of like Doomster blogs we like pe pe people who's like um the the pee doom as it's so called, the probability of doom Yeah, is high. Um I read lots of that stuff. And uh I I think that there are I I really hope you're right. And I th I agree. It's sort of like there isn't really any middle ground. It's either going to be heaven or hell.

Like a and it's c it's quite easy that you like you can anticipate just like an accidental hell, right? Just like the uh a an AI that um just becomes all powerful. um and doesn't yield and and th also the the the potential that they will become so smart

that we won't even know what they're doing. Like because they're like like for us, like our I think our understanding of intelligence is is limited by our human experience and human experience is limited by the size of a cranium, right? Like you can't

get smarter than than a brain that will fit into a cranium. Um but if you've got like a a like a computer the size of the gigafactory or whatever and it and it becomes like artificial and it develops AGI and it can then create other versions of itself and there's a community of these things that are communicating with each other. There will be there's no reason to believe that they will be you know As smart compared to us as we are to a cat.

you know, and cats have got no clue what we're up to. And and likewise, you know, they might not even be communicating in a language that we understand or can even d discern that we can either see or hear. They might be communicating through whatever some you know, some other part of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can't see or hear without some sort of instruments and what have you. It could be encrypted. Like there's just it's is I think that there are all kinds of

of ways in which this could go really badly wrong. But You know, like I think that also the early signs are pretty positive. Like you said, like you know, you're using it every day. I use it like all the time, um as a as a tool for like And I find it really helpful for engaging in dialogue, just like just to be in in a state of dialogue with something, um, is so helpful for getting my own sort of creative juices flowing. Um

And you know, I think there there's definitely an a a sense of concern of things being a bit too much outsourced to them, you know. I started to see like videos on on YouTube that have just so obviously been written by an AI posted by an AI, voiced by an AI, and it's really shallow and it's just like it's sort of it looks like it's going to solve the problem that you face, but then you click on it and it's just

you know, crap. Um and I think I'm I'm concerned that the world is just going to fill rapidly with AI generated, like low quality stuff. Um that's gonna make it hard to find the signal um amongst the noise, you know. Um but I I hope you're right, you know, I hope you're right. And um it it it's unbelievably it's an unbelievably powerful

tool, isn't it? Set of tools. Um yeah. Um I hear you want all of those concerns. I hear you it's absolutely the case. In the in our in our areas is there were shared shared interests of of education, I think for me um ultimately if if we can free up space within the curriculum, if you want to call it that, for well being.

Yeah, which at the moment it it can't get any airtime. If if AI can help whether it's teachers marking, whether it's lesson planning, whether it's how st uh students deliver their work Well, you know, ex anything that allows us to get back to some humaning is is welcome. And I think there'll be some natural ebb and flow with, you know

or how little it's doing for us and where it's going too far, etc. There's always that with anything new, as you know. There's a there's a push and there's a pull and then there's a settling.

in the in the right place. So yeah, but it it's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. It sure is. Well, Chris, thank you very much. I've really, really enjoyed this this conversation. Um And I hope it's the beginning of many many more like it and it seems that our values and and ideas are very, very strongly aligned.

Um and you say you're gonna come to Manchester in October? Yeah, I'd had it sent to me already and uh the only problem with it. The only problem with it is it's a Saturday and my children, so I'm gonna f I find a way um to m try and make it happen. But uh Well we are li how old are your kids? Uh nearly fourteen. Oh, that's old enough. We we really want kids to come to this thing. We really want so like the whole like I said about the EPA, the Education Policy Alliance.

our DNA is that we are like, you know, comprised and so we've got quotas on Eventbrite there's quotas and so it's already full for like uh uh for um Alter I nearly said artificial educators then. For for alternative educators. Rydyn ni'n meddwl. Rydyn ni'n meddwl. Rydyn ni'n meddwl. Rydyn ni'n meddwl amdwl amdwl amdwl amdwl amdwl amdwl amdwl amdwl

um uh Dr. James Manion's work will be in the show notes and I'm sure they will be um when James shares it on his podcast as well and and the Seen and Heard resources will be in there too. So whether it be the event, whether it be the book um making change stick um or information around the programs that James is running and and Seaman Heard are running as well. So um should we call it a day there, James?

Let's call it a day. Thank you very much, Chris. Uh may your um may your work um continue and flourish and all power to your elbow. It sounds like you're doing very important, worthwhile stuff. Mm. Thank you. And and to you the same. And uh I I feel very uh grateful that that young people in Wales will be will be starting to see your work running through, you know, from from very, very soon. And that's incredible. Um so yeah.

Thank you for your time today, really appreciate it, and thank you so much to everybody who's been listening or watching.