This episode considers how primary schools can balance their budgets, raise funds, and make the most of limited financial resources.

Two school finance experts discuss tips, ideas, and advice, including tenets of best practice in optimising your school’s budget and for effective financial management.

We discuss challenges including rising energy and National Insurance costs, and falling pupil rolls. We also offer a range of ideas for reducing expenditure and generating income.

We consider areas where schools can work together to achieve economies of scale and hold suppliers to account, and how school improvement and School Development Plans link to budgeting.

This podcast discusses effective appraisal and performance management practice in primary schools.

Three experienced school leaders discuss principles of effective appraisal systems, including elements of a successful appraisal and tips for setting objectives.

How can we place CPD at the heart of performance management and make the process collegiate/collaborative? How can we identify a teacher’s strengths? What can we do if a teacher is underperforming, especially to support new teachers?

Other topics include building trust, preparing for appraisals, school culture, getting feedback right, creating the conditions for professional learning, and how headteachers can demonstrate impact for their own appraisals.

This episode tackles Ofsted inspections, offering practical advice for primary schools to help you thrive when the inspectors call.

Two experienced headteachers offer tips and ideas, big and small, for handling Ofsted from start to finish.

We tackle subject deep dives, explaining how they are working in practice and how we can prepare without adding to workload, including tips for subject/middle leaders.

We discuss: Handling the emotions/pressure of inspection as a school leader, tactics for if things go wrong, the 90-minute phone call, things to prepare in advance, supporting colleagues & protecting staff wellbeing, useful tips and anecdotes.

This episode considers the consequences that poverty has for children and their education and offers practical ideas for how primary schools can address these.

We look at the national picture of child poverty, causes and impact, and the barriers it creates to education and school.

Our experts offer key principles for how we can work to counteract the impact of disadvantage in schools and a wealth of practical ideas – large and small – for supporting pupils.

We discuss family engagement, the curriculum, how the Pupil Premium can be used, boosting Pupil Premium registration, and pitfalls to avoid when allocating this funding.

This episode considers effective parent/carer engagement and asks how we can create parent-friendly schools.

Our experts offer principles for effective parental engagement and discuss how schools can get parents/carers on board, how we can build positive relationships, and tips for headteachers new in post.

We talk school gates, bacon sandwiches, and ideas for how we can make our schools more “parent-friendly”.

There are tips for getting parents to show an interest in learning at home and for handling difficult conversations and difficult parents.

Other topics include parent conferences, homework, websites, home communication, and working with the PTA.

This episode looks at supporting pupils as they make the transition from primary to secondary school.

We chat with two secondary schools and two feeder primaries about common transition challenges and solutions.

We look at when transition work should begin, what the process looks like, engaging with parents, identifying pupils who may struggle, and supporting vulnerable pupils.

We discuss tried and tested ideas for transition interventions, activities and taster days.

Other topics include curriculum consistency, academic support, year 7 transition activities, open evenings, year 7 pupil ambassadors working with year 6 pupils, and the impact of Covid on transition.

This episode takes a practical look at how primary schools can support vulnerable pupils, including looked after children and those living with trauma and adverse childhood experiences.

We ask what form ACEs and trauma can take, what impact they have, and what being a trauma-informed school involves.

We consider therapeutic approaches and how to create calming classroom environments.

We discuss: making behaviour management more effective and less reactive; the common mistakes schools make and how can we avoid them; responding to emotionally based school-based avoidance; and helping vulnerable children to successfully manage their emotions at key times of the day.

What is the best way to teach pupils to read and how can teachers ensure every child leaves primary school a fluent reader?

This episode considers the components of effective whole-school reading (and literacy) strategies.

The podcast is packed with teaching tips and techniques as well as whole-school ideas to engage pupils and boost reading skills.

We discuss: early years & early reading work, reading aloud, improving fluency, using the school library, fostering reading for pleasure, the kinds of books that will spark a love of reading for life, the DfE's 2021 Reading Framework, common challenges, and engaging reluctant readers.

This episode considers what outstanding governance looks like in the primary school, how to be a great governor, and how school leaders and governors can work together effectively.

We ask how headteachers can foster strong, professional relationships with governors, and vice-versa.

We advise new headteachers how they might begin to build working relationships with governors, including questions to ask during your first meeting, and we advise governors how to build relationships with new heads.

We consider governor workload, how heads can handle 'difficult' governors, what we can do when the relationship breaks down, and what lessons Covid has taught us.

In part two, we chat to three colleagues working in primary schools about their safeguarding work, examples of best practice, and useful ideas.

They discuss current trends, effective safeguarding principles, and how to ensure a culture of “it could happen here”.

Themes include SEND, Covid, spotting the patterns, effective communication, empowering staff to question narratives, supporting volunteer staff, peer-on-peer abuse, online safety, attendance, domestic abuse, and referring to social care.

Part 1 featuring safeguarding expert Elizabeth Rose is still available via https://bit.ly/htu-podcastsafe