José Picardo
Experienced school leader | Education consultant | Helping schools, educators & organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose.
- Why Blaming Screens for Cognitive Decline Misses the Point Recent testimony to the US Senate on “cognitive decline” and educational technology has reignited a familiar debate: whether screens are eroding young people’s capacity to think, and whether technology itself is inherently detrimental to…
- Leading Words: The Language of Leadership Leadership is often described in terms of vision, decisiveness, or character. In schools, it is experienced in a more immediate and persistent way: in language. It appears in the sentence chosen for an email sent at the end of a demanding day, in the…
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership #culture. When questioning is taken as resistance, or alignment is mistaken for agreement, culture takes a hit. Healthy school cultures make space for principled disagreement. That’s not a weakness. It’s a strength.
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #professionaljudgement & #leadership. Fluency & polished outcomes can mask shallow understanding. In classrooms & meetings appearance can be mistaken for depth. It’s not whether something looks complete, but whether it can withstand questioning, transfer & application.
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership. Speed can feel reassuring. But many of the most important issues are not solved by quick responses or confident declarations. Good leaders slow the conversation and create space for thinking before deciding. Which questions we are giving time to?
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #culture and #behaviour. Culture is formed in everyday moments: behaviour that goes unchallenged; unfair decisions that remain uncontested; standards that slip because addressing them is uncomfortable. Over time, these moments become the norm, not the exception.
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership and #culture. What looks efficient in timetables, data dashboards or decision chains can feel very different in classrooms and staffrooms. In healthy cultures, efficiency serves learning and care. In more toxic ones, it replaces them.
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #leadership and #culture. Culture is shaped in the everyday moments. How decisions are explained. How mistakes are handled. How people are treated. Small things, done consistently, are what really matters. Worth holding in mind.
- Today’s #Thoughtlet is as much about #Pedagogy as it is about #Leadership. We often mistake challenge for withdrawal, removing scaffolds just as thinking becomes demanding. In strong learning cultures, it works the other way round: support increases as thinking gets harder.
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #agency. Most professionals don’t lack motivation. They lack trust. When professional judgement is replaced with instruction, compliance rises but agency recedes. Trusting people to think does not lower standards, it raises them. Worth holding in mind, I think.
- Today’s #thoughtlet is about #edtech: ”Technology amplifies intent before it improves outcomes.” Tech isn’t progressive or traditional. It doesn’t magically turn mediocre teaching into excellent teaching. It just turns the volume up. Or, as Bananarama put it: it ain’t what you do…
- Daily #thoughtlet. Today on #leadership Many leaders carry this weight with good intent. But when everything flows through one person, the system slows and your team's capability diminishes. The real work of leadership is not becoming indispensable, but making yourself less so over time.
- Strongly recommend this leadership strategy retreat run by the good folks at Albion on 3 Feb at Leeds Castle. A thoughtful, evidence-informed space for senior leaders to reflect on digital strategy, inclusion and school improvement in a spectacular setting. 👇 www.albion.co.uk/leeds-castle...
- Five Things AI Does Well And Five Things It Does Not I am now well into my second decade of leading technology implementation in schools. Much of that work has focused less on devices themselves and more on the leadership judgement required to introduce change at scale in ways that remain faithful…
- Six Damaging Metaphors We Use In Schools, And How to Avoid Them Schools run on stories. I get that. I once worked with a headteacher who began assemblies by saying, “What I am about to tell you never happened, but it is true nonetheless.” He was signalling that what followed was not meant as…
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- “Intellectual history”
- @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social @rory-stewart.bsky.social My partner Ulrike and I are really looking forward to seeing you both tomorrow in Bournemouth. You’re her birthday treat! 🎂
- From Dots to Thinking: How Knowledge Shapes Critical Thought www.azimuth.org.uk/from-dots-to...
- Check out my article: Five Things Every School Can Do to Improve: Reflections from the Frontline www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-t... via @LinkedIn
- If you’re leading digital strategy in a school, this one’s for you. Link in replies 👇
- The Leadership Compass is a free tool that maps your leadership styles and shows where your habits sit on the Healthy ↔ Toxic spectrum. Get an instant radar chart, a leadership health slider, and expert feedback in one minute. 👉 Try it : compass.azimuth.org.uk
- “Pedagogy first” isn’t about rejecting innovation. It’s about priority: learning happens in people, not in devices. Tools come and go, but the processes of teaching and learning endure. New blog 👇 www.azimuth.org.uk/rethinking-p...
- One for school leaders👇 Study Partner or Shortcut? How Students Really Use AI www.azimuth.org.uk/study-partne...
- AI can amplify learning, but only if used wisely. The STAR framework (Spark, Think, Act, Reflect) helps schools harness AI while keeping learning human. Download the summary PDF + full article here 👉 www.azimuth.org.uk/the-star-fra...
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- It is achievable. The question is whether the effort required is worthwhile. And the bananarama principle would apply.
- 🚨 One-off webinar, limited places! Beyond the Device: Building a Digital Strategy that Puts Learning First 📅 4 November 🕓 16:30 GMT For school leaders & educators who want clarity, confidence & purpose in digital adoption (inc. AI). 🎟️ Register: www.azimuth.org.uk/beyond-the-d...
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- From elsewhere on my blog. You see? Stand down, soldier. We're not storming the beecheas just yet... www.azimuth.org.uk/ai-is-changi...
- Here’s the full paragraph for context. Have you heard of reported speech?
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- Logical fallacies aren’t cogent. You can tilt at windmills all you like. But on your own. I’m off to have a nice evening. Come back when you can tell me where I said the things you said I said.
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- Wow. Read it again. Where am I parroting the line that cognitive offloading is making people dumber? I’d thought the piece is a little more nuanced than that, even for those in search of a straw man! 😊
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- Some are some less so. As they say: the future is already here, just not evenly distributed. I’m working on the distribution bit!
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- I think this or something like this is the only way. School is not just about learning subjects, important though that is, but also about teaching children how to be the best version of themselves so as to make the world a better place for everyone.
- Daily #thoughtlet The best leaders cultivate successors, not followers. Their success is not measured by being indispensable, but by how well others flourish in their absence. A true legacy is capacity, not dependency. Leadership is about growing people, not reliance.
- Daily #Thoughtlet #Leadership is contagious. Good or bad, your style ripples through an organisation. If you shadowed yourself for a week, would you want to catch what you’re spreading?
- Good leadership requires emotional maturity. From forgiving without excusing to balancing compassion with accountability, here are 20 signs that mark out leaders we can trust. Read more: www.azimuth.org.uk/20-signs-of-...
- AI in schools sits between hype and hope. School teachers, leaders, and students need clarity. Here’s a simple 6-point strategy to guide purposeful, human-centred use of AI. 📍Poster below and link to full article in replies👇 #EdTech #AI #EduAI
- Here's the link to the article www.azimuth.org.uk/ai-in-school...
- Saturday morning thought: most teachers don’t resist technology; they resist *new* technology and the challenge it initially brings. Once it’s mundane, it stops being “tech” and becomes just “how we work.” Is this your experience?
- In schools, pressure leads to bold drives, strain erodes other priorities, counter-measures shift the focus… and round we go. Does this sound familiar? We rarely talk about the unacknowledged trade-offs at its core. 🔗Link to full article in the replies 👇
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- Probably. The constant push for more without acknowledging trade-offs can feel relentless, and it takes a real toll. Cakeism captures part of that dynamic, and it’s no surprise many colleagues feel squeezed out by it.
- Here is the link to the full article. Let me know what you think! 😀 www.azimuth.org.uk/cakeism-and-...
- 🎓 Can’t have it both ways. We say we want teachers to engage with research. But when they do and write about their experience they’re dismissed. We can’t champion evidence-informed practice and then complain teachers are doing precisely as we wanted. 😊
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- Education should value the experience and care that all teachers bring. Schools are made richer by diversity, not just in people, but in approaches to teaching too. We need to do better at recognising that.
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- Crikey. It’s terrible when something you pursued to become a better teacher ends up being used against you. The fact that your students have thrived says a lot and I hope, in time, that gets recognised more widely.
- 🧠 Not all quick thinkers are strategic. 🤫 Not all quiet ones are lacking insight. Introducing the Latency–Depth Leadership Matrix: a new way to understand how speed and substance shape school leadership.
- Read more 👉 www.azimuth.org.uk/latency-and-...
- We told kids coding was the future. Now many computer science graduates can’t find jobs. Education shouldn’t chase fads, it should prepare children for the present, giving them the knowledge to shape their future, not the one we imagine for them. www.azimuth.org.uk/ai-coding-an...
- From the printing press to the digital revolution, history shows that innovation often walks hand in hand with disruption and conflict. 🔥 The fire is lit. What we do next matters. Some thoughts on the subject. 🔗 Link in replies.
- Here is the link www.azimuth.org.uk/the-fire-wev...
