The Rule
You don't fix a system by reacting faster.
You change it by choosing what matters.
The One Thing
Focus isn't found, it's chosen.
Clarity doesn't appear when things calm down.
It's what calms things down.
The Challenge
It was one of those terms.
Every week brought something new:
staffing gaps
rising SEND needs
behaviour incidents increasing
parent pressure building
SLT meetings became triage.
Solve one issue… two more appear.
Everyone was working hard.
But nothing felt like it was shifting.
Here's what the data says about this experience.
The UK Leadership Survey found that the majority of school leaders' time is consumed by administration, safeguarding, staffing, and compliance, leaving little opportunity to focus on curriculum development or teaching improvement.
Nearly half of senior school leaders across the UK say they feel burned out "often", with one leader describing the job as feeling "close to unmanageable, with the sheer range of demands pulling them in all directions".
The 2025 Teacher Wellbeing Index paints an even starker picture: 86% of senior leaders feel stressed, with many reporting signs of burnout and exhaustion. 81% report the feeling of having too many things to do without enough time to do them, a phenomenon researchers call "time poverty". 77% of education staff experienced symptoms of poor mental health caused by their work.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:
Teachers and school leaders are overworked, under-supported, and increasingly exposed to stress, anxiety, and burnout. No wonder there is a significant retention issue in the education workforce. This is a system in crisis.
The Heart
The problem wasn't effort.
It was direction.
When everything is urgent, everything competes. And when everything competes, nothing changes.
The RAISE White Paper, published in February 2026, sets out a clear policy direction: a shift from narrow, reactive intervention towards earlier, broader and more inclusive support rooted in mainstream education wherever possible.
The government has committed £4 billion to embed specialist SEND support across schools, with £1.6 billion direct funding for schools to provide small-group interventions and £1.8 billion for an "Experts at Hand" service giving schools access to educational psychologists and speech and language therapists.
But here's the gap the White Paper doesn't fill. The proposed system is built on five core principles: offering early support, enabling children to learn close to home, ensuring fairness, promoting effective evidence-based practice and strengthening shared responsibility between education, health, care and families.
However, evidence-based support only works if schools know what they're aiming for in the first place.
Without clarity on the priority, the One Big Change, even the best-funded reform falls flat.
The Education Endowment Foundation's Schools' Guide to Implementation stresses the importance of building a shared understanding, uniting staff and stakeholders behind a clear purpose and embedding routines for reflection and continuous improvement. One of the guide's central messages is that sustainable change doesn't come from speed; it comes from precision.
Example
Then something small changed.
In one conversation, they paused and asked:
What is the one thing that would make everything else easier this term?
Not five priorities. Not a list.
Just one.
That became their One Big Change™.
It didn't solve everything overnight.
But something shifted:
conversations became clearer
decisions became faster
staff understood the direction
energy stopped scattering
The work didn't reduce. But the noise did.
The school moved from firefighting to focus.
When the priority was clear, funding streams aligned, conversations sharpened, and partnerships moved from vague to targeted.
Over To You
This is why we're running One Big Change Workshops from May.
Not another initiative.
A space to:
step out of firefighting
align your SLT
define one clear priority
Our first session is the JONK run Marcelo, focused on helping answer the question: What changes when the first week of term changes?
Interested in learning more about our first workshop on the JONK school, how many schools have brought clarity from the JONK philosophy, and why you want to attend one of the OBC workshops? Get in touch today.
Want to find out what other experts we have coming up and what other workshops are running in 2026/27?
Keep an eye on these emails or visit the OBC website to learn more
Your One Thing This Tuesday
Take 60 seconds. Write down your One Big Change — one sentence answering: "What would make the most difference in our school before July?"
Then reply to this email with that sentence.
We'll send back three matched vendors who can help deliver it.
That's it. One sentence. One reply. Three potential partners.
Try it now.
👉 Or claim your school profile: locaerisematch.com
We read every reply
Go here and search schools, register and find your school, then name your OBC, we have a helper online to help you work out your OBC as you claim your school: locaerisematch.com
Yvonne
LocaeShift
Where school buying really moves.
Sources:
UK Leadership Survey 2025 (Universities of Warwick and Nottingham / ESRC) · Sustainable School Leadership Project · Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025 (Education Support) · NEU Teacher Wellbeing Index response (November 2025) · RAISE White Paper 2026: Every Child Achieving and Thriving (GOV.UK) · EEF Schools' Guide to Implementation (2023)