This is a guest blog, from headteacher Rob Dell, who also wrote THIS article (about whether mainstream schooling and gentle parenting can ever mix:
When I meet new parents at our school, they often arrive armed with the usual tools: performance tables, Ofsted grades, league positions. I understand why. These are the official signals—public-facing indicators of quality, safety, and worth.
But what those parents are really trying to ask, though few say it outright, is: Will my child be known here? Will they be cared for? Will they be safe—emotionally and physically?
Those questions are harder to measure, and harder still to find on the Department for Education website.
In 2023, our school was judged Requires Improvement. That judgement was public, blunt, and—depending on your view—either deserved or completely missing the point.
What didn’t make the report were the safeguarding cases we managed with rigour and heart. It didn’t mention the child who came to us in crisis and left able to smile again. It didn’t recognise the teaching assistant who turned down her lunch break to help a child decode not just a sentence, but their own feelings.
It didn’t measure the quiet acts of protection, the trust earned, the laughter returned.
Instead, it noted that we “needed to improve the pace of progress.”
As if grief, neglect, trauma, and neurodivergence follow linear patterns.
“We build a family from a spreadsheet and soul.”
— Requires Improvement
Beyond Metrics: What to Look For
So, what should parents look for when choosing a school?
Start by noticing the atmosphere. Not the displays or the Ofsted banners—but the emotional temperature.
Do staff seem stretched to breaking or calmly purposeful? Do the children look comfortable in their own skin, or tightly held by behaviour systems that demand compliance over connection?
“They come in hot from homes that burn cold.”
— Requires Improvement
Ask how the school approaches safeguarding—not just how they record it. Ask what happens when a child is dysregulated, when behaviour is a form of communication. Ask how children are supported when they’re neurodivergent, grieving, hungry, or just having a bad day.
“When others see attendance, we see survival.”
— Requires Improvement
Ask how staff are cared for. A school that looks after its team is far more likely to look after your child.
Sarah’s note: You can find my list of what to ask, and look for on school open days, when choosing a school HERE and for lots of support navigating the UK school application process with your 4 or 5 year old, check out my ‘The Starting School Book‘.
A New Government, A New Direction?
With the recent political change, we’re offered an opportunity to rethink what really matters in education.
If I could place anything at the top of the new government’s priorities, it wouldn’t be a new assessment framework or another accountability rejig. It would be wellbeing—in its fullest sense.
Not just yoga sessions and PSHE slots, but a fundamental rewiring of how we define success.
Let’s stop asking children to “close the gap” when the system keeps digging the hole.
“They call the storm ‘disruption.’”
— Requires Improvement
Let’s make music, art, and rest priorities—not because they’re nice extras, but because they’re essential parts of being whole.
“Yes, I carry shame—like a rucksack I forgot I put on.
But I also carry fire.”
— Always Moving
Let’s value safeguarding, emotional regulation, and compassion as signs of excellence—not soft add-ons.
A Pause in the System
Over the past year, I began writing poems as a way to process the emotional and ethical strain of leadership—and of being neurodivergent in a role that rarely pauses.
Those poems became Parenthesis—a collection (and album) exploring what it means to care for children in a system that doesn’t always make space for care.
A parenthesis, after all, is a bracket—a pause. A space set aside.
That’s what good schools are.
Not perfect. Not polished.
But places that hold the child when everything else is too sharp, too fast, or too much.
“We hold them safe.
We hold them steady.
And we—
we’re doing our very best.”
— Requires Improvement
About the author:
Rob Dell is a parent, headteacher, and designated safeguarding lead based in Hertfordshire. His first collection, Parenthesis, explores education through the lens of trauma, neurodivergence, and ethical leadership.
You can listen to the companion album here: Parenthesis – by Rob Dell
Sarah Ockwell-Smith 
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