Square Peg

Great session! 🙏🏻

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

We’re so pleased to be sponsoring 'Everybody Thriving: How can we promote wellbeing and a love of learning?' - a one-day event from Rethinking Ed, @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social and @edpolalliance.bsky.social.

📅 Saturday 11 October
📍 St Ambrose Barlow RC High School, Swinton
🎫 buff.ly/XP5WYQv

This amazing event is both online and face-to-face, so wherever you are in the world, you will be most welcome! It's an 'unconference' designed to crowd-source ideas for how we might increase wellbeing within the constraints of the current system #wearethesystem

Link 👇

“Square pegs, round holes” with Ellie Costello Talking Inclusion… With Geoff Barton · Episode

🎧 When we design for the most marginalised, everyone benefits. Too many children feel like square pegs in round holes, explains Ellie Costello of @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social. Listen to episode 8 of Talking Inclusion... with @realgeoffbarton.bsky.social now!
open.spotify.com/episode/64dD...

Square Pegs Square Pegs by Fran Morgan with Ellie Costello

I love hearing about schools that offer some curriculum flex. Carr Manor in Leeds timetables interest-based learning 1 day/wk for KS3
- described in this @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social book. Promotes inclusion & engagement.

www.crownhouse.co.uk/square-pegs

Hearing @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social talking to #jamesobrien was so refreshing.

I couldn’t agree more.

And they say you shouldn't meet your heroes...

Wonderful afternoon setting the world to rights with @audreyt.org and Gisele Chou, co-authors (among many others) of the uber-fascinating and inspiring Plurality

Geeking out at the Ashmolean with @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social & the amazing Finn!

We’ve created a new generation of kids who’ll grow up distrustful of services, wrestling mental illness and comorbid impact on health. Their stories will out and we will hang our heads in shame.

4.

They’re destroying our kids’ self esteem, stunting development, manifesting mental illness. The shadow cast coupled with years of failed interventions and intrusion into family life is decimating families’ lives.

3/

They look reasonable and benign. They aren’t. They reward the most able and healthy, discriminate and stigmatise everyone else.

2/

The ultra-disciplined approach sails quite close to common sense, but it absolutely isn’t working In 2021 our school switched from a nurturing style to one with an ultra-strict behaviour policy. The idea is to create a ‘calm environment’, but the means to get that environment is by creating a c…

The introduction of short-shrift command & conquer / reward & sanction behaviour management policies in my kids’ school from 2011 started a cascade of consequences we as a family continue to face today.

1/

rescueourschools.co.uk/2025/02/25/c...

I ❤️ Carr Manor’s KS3 curriculum as described in Square Pegs: Inclusivity, compassion and fitting in by @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social, esp the Y9 pupils’ choice of specialised ‘study school’ learning every Monday ✨

Image shows the cover of the book 'Square Pegs'

Read no.3 of 2025 - It took me a long while to get through this one, but as a parent to 2 square pegs, it was an important one. I recommend that every head teacher in the UK read this @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social

There's an interview with Ellie Costello of @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social in my new book that you might find interesting.

I guess maybe something like the ‘consistent commitment to include every family, to give every child every chance’ approach outlined by Lucie Larkin of Carr Manor in Square Pegs: Inclusivity, compassion and fitting in, by @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social. Their ‘staff circles’ idea is awesome 💕

Attendance crisis: cliched explanations help no one Attendance was a growing concern before the pandemic, so let’s not resort to simple answers to explain what’s going on now, says Ellie Costello from Square Peg

Cliched explanations for the attendance crisis – such as shifting attitudes and the prevalence of working from home – ignore the real issues facing children across the country, says Ellie Costello from @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social

Attendance crisis: cliched explanations help no one Attendance was a growing concern before the pandemic, so let’s not resort to simple answers to explain what’s going on now, says Ellie Costello from Square Peg

Well, truly humbled to have been asked to write about attendance for @tesmagazine.bsky.social by @jonsevers.bsky.social.

Grateful to be given the opportunity to add some context re. narratives around what’s ‘motivating’ families. Often, the reasons are heartbreaking.

www.tes.com/magazine/ana...

The opposite of 'inclusive design's is not 'normal design' - it's 'exclusionary design'. Or if, like me, you are feeling spicy 'hostile design'.

‘While physical punishment is no longer allowed, mental punishment is’ - Dan Rosenberg, writing in Square Pegs: Inclusivity, compassion and fitting in (2023) 😔 @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social

Made it into a pretty awesome starter pack! How lovely is that? 🥰
Thank you @beckycarlzon.bsky.social

Wow! 🤩 THANK YOU!☺️

Wow! Feeling the BlueSkyLove! Thank you @kezzasett.bsky.social 🥰

And it’s exactly what we hoped our book would initiate - inspiration, intention, aspiration, ambition. A lever for change. And on this occasion, we’ve been invited along for the ride!

amzn.eu/d/c1m2B7b

It is rare to join a senior leadership, support staff, specialist teachers, parents & kids in the margins all aligned and ready to embed a legacy of belonging and inclusion. Together.

What an honour and privilege for Team Square Peg.

Heart is brimming & brain buzzing after time w a courageous, determined HT who wants to work w SP after reading our book, buying 70 copies for staff, kids, parents to read & share, which has led to more collaborative convos & insights in last 6 mths than ever before for this HT & sch community.

Yesterday was just wonderful.

ASCL Pastoral Leadership conference is a pretty special space.

Excellent to listen to @pepediiasio.bsky.social on ChWB Schs Bill; Tom Shaw Carr Manor; Soofia Amin Ken Primary Sch & join panel @nicoleponsford.bsky.social & fabulous colleagues chaired by Phil NAPCE.

Also, thanks to @teamsquarepeg.bsky.social and @nataliepacker.bsky.social for their helpful contributions.

This isn't about criticism of schools - none are named.

But it does ask "Surely we can do better?"

Topics on the other place that have been hard to navigate this week:

Isolating kids
Restraining kids
Vexatious parents
Institutional harm

In no other sector are these themes dismissed, denied, misunderstood quite so much as in schools and education.