Articles

I’ve sensed a disconnect in the way culture in education is treated like a project to be managed. We launch initiatives, create new positions of responsibility for ‘culture,’ bring in professional development to fix the culture, even putting up posters with our values. But this is a fundamental misalignment. Culture is not a program you implement; it is the output of the systems you design. It’s the remnant of how education organizations actually work, day in and day out.

I don’t have a philosophical issue with standardised testing. I understand why it’s contentious, but when used well, it is one of the most efficient and least biased ways to understand patterns, gaps, and program efficacy at a school level over time. It allows for longitudinal analysis, comparability across cohorts, and direct mapping to curriculum outcomes in ways that internal assessment alone cannot reliably do.

Let me start with a foundational experience. A few years ago, I read my Masters research after finishing my PhD, and what I saw was a completely different writer. What a shift in confidence and authority in writing style! That journey, pre-AI, was about dealing with liminality, impostor syndrome, and the slow, sometimes painful process of finding my voice. That philosophical question of “who am I?” as a writer is the connection between language and consciousness. And I’m not sure AI really gets that.

The Accountability Illusion

Over time, I’ve noticed how often curriculum review is described as “document heavy,” positioned as paperwork crowding out meaningful professional work.