057 - Pit Pony Emma Harper - Classroom to CEO / Marketing Mentor - Part 2

Emma Harper Part 2: Finding Freedom After the Fall

In the second half of Emma Harper’s story, we follow her journey out of the classroom for good. After a final crisis point left her broken and exhausted, Emma made the decision to leave teaching in December 2023. What followed was not just survival, but transformation.

Emma shares how tutoring became a vital part of her healing, how she built Core Plus Tuition, and why creating a safe space for both students and tutors has become her mission. We also explore how her business grew, leading to the launch of Make Your Marketing Count, her second venture supporting service-based business owners.

This episode also includes a powerful epilogue, where we reflect on adult safeguarding in schools, systemic failure, and the push for meaningful change at a national level. Honest, heartfelt, and fuelled by purpose, Emma’s story is a must-listen for anyone who has ever questioned what teaching is costing them.

Emmas links :

http://www.facebook.com/makeyourmarketingcount

https://www.coreplustuition.com/

http://linkedin.com/emma-harper-coreplustuition

https://www.facebook.com/CorePlusTuition/

With thanks to our episode sponsors (Click to visit their websites):

Conexus Tuition 

Little Voices

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Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital R...

Transcript

Thank you to our sponsors, Little Voices. Are you a teacher with a passion for drama, music and performance or feeling stuck in the classroom? Little Voices gives you the chance to step into a role where you can truly inspire young minds through the arts. This is a company I know well and admire. 

They're passionate about child development, highly rated and genuine and transformative. With small group teaching, a focus on confidence and creativity. With the opportunity to guide children through Lambda qualifications, you can make a real impact. 

Plus, with the support of a nationwide franchise network behind you, you can run your own successful business, doing what you love while teaching in a way that truly fits your life. He took one look at me and he was, gave me a massive hug and he said, you're leaving now, right? And I just went, yeah, I'm done. Wow. 

Thank you listeners for sticking with us and welcome back to part two of Emma's story. Wow Emma, it took a 26 year old out of teaching to go, when is enough enough? Yeah, my husband's been telling me for 10 years. Oh, everybody you love, she tells you. 

That's what I hear with pit ponies all the time. My parents are telling me to get out. My husband tells me to get out. 

My kids tell me to get out. But what we do is we channel in that part of our character that goes, and I went back into the lesson. For some reason, there's this stubbornness, this innate need to prove what it is that I can do this. 

I don't, I don't even know what it is. It's different things for different people. Sarah, what makes us not go? Yeah, you're right. 

Sack it off. We're going to end up talking about this in the epilogue deeply, but I'm going to say this. Sometimes it isn't about the person, Emma, who says I need to go back into that. 

I'm expected to go back in the lesson. It's not about that, about the failure of the adults around other adults to safeguard those adults. That was not a decision that somebody who is in crisis in that moment should have even have been expected to take because that head of department or somebody else should have gone, you need to go home. 

That's a safeguarding issue. This has been true in schools for a very long time. We focus so much on safeguarding of children, rightly so, absolutely rightly so, and you know where I stand on that. 

We focus on behavior management because I've actually got a about behavior management at the moment as a term and the strategies that we use with children to try and get them to change their behavior when they're bullying, but those protections and mechanisms are not actually in place to protect adults in that environment either. That should not have been Emma's decision. It's almost if. 

If you're not naturally empathetic, if you're not naturally compassionate, you almost separate them off, don't you? I can safeguard children, but it's not my responsibility to safeguard an adult. Correct. Now people who've naturally got that within them, there will have been colleagues who you'll have worked with who will have sent you home, who have gone. 

Absolutely. And they're the best of the best. Yeah. 

But you're right. It's almost like night and day when it comes to safeguarding children. It's as if the two rules don't apply. 

Yeah. The two are not the same. So right. 

Can I now say ladies, so you finally leave the classroom. I did go back till Christmas because that was October half term, but I did it because I needed to show myself that I could. I couldn't leave knowing that I'd left under that cloud.

I needed to make sure that I, I could do it for myself. So I did go back, but I left at Christmas. I did another like six weeks. 

So you do another six weeks. Okay. You leave. 

You've already been setting up the tutoring. So you're, you're walking into, I should imagine it's not making the same money at this stage as it was with your classroom teacher. But in some ways I healed through tuition. 

Tuition was a really big healing process for me because I was still surrounded by the stuff that I was exposed to when I was in the classroom, like the texts and the exam and the terminology and the language. So I'd still got those trigger points to a certain extent. Early days, I might've dug out a handout to something that I'd produced or an old exam paper that I could, Oh, put me back in that space. 

But the freedom, the freedom of being my own boss, the freedom to be creative, to learn new business skills, to step into a new world of learning where I was able to thrive. And I didn't have to ask permission. That was the bit for me. 

I didn't, if I mucked up and you know, I've shared my story so many times, you know, I have, I've made mistakes or I've got things wrong. It's all right. Cause there's only me. 

I had to, it's the worst of it sometimes. Cause you've got to look yourself in the eye, but it is possible to have a wonderful, wonderful life, harnessing all the things that you don't want to get rid of, all of your skillset, all of the things that made you so instantly recognisable as talented. But this time it's working for you. 

So it's a wonderful, wonderful space. And core plus tuition sounds amazing. You've got a team around you. 

I'm sure you are leading them with the compassion that was absent when you were a teacher. That was one of the main things for me was providing a safe space for the students. Cause we all know that the system's broken and it's not safe for them anyway, but also more importantly for me was providing a safe space for my tutors. 

I wanted to make sure I looked after them because I realized that despite what I thought at the time I wasn't looked after in teaching. So I've made sure that with my tutors, I do look after them. I trust them to do their job. 

I don't micromanage them. I pay them well and I'm there for them when they need me. And when they don't need me, I give them their space. 

And for me, that's really important because as much as I've told you so much today, I haven't told everything. I haven't told every little story along the way. And there was micromanagement and there was the toxic leadership. 

And if we went through all of it, we'd be here for decades. But it's, I make sure that when I'm leading core plus tuition, I'm doing it with all those things in mind so that my tutors feel safe. It's leading from the heart, isn't it? And I think that's utterly no, take away the strong adjective. 

There are places within education where that sort of leading from the heart, being human is absent. It's really, really absent. And we've timestamped this. 

I think Sharon's already said it's the 18th of May at the start of this week. I put something into the group because we are now doing the, we're doing the legwork, we're doing the research, we're getting the accounts from people in writing. And by the time this goes out, there are things in play now. 

And if we skirt around it and we do brush over it, and you're right, if we sat and talked, you and I and Sharon would be here for four hours this afternoon talking about everything, because that's how it works. We can't gloss over it anymore. We cannot gloss over that this is not just about little pockets within the education system.

There is a systemic problem, but it's not just one problem. And it's not just one bad guy either. This is not the post office. 

There isn't one. It's cultural and it's grown and it's spread over the last 10, 15 years. It's about behavior management. 

It's about SEND being completely unsupported. It's about micromanagement, toxic leadership. It's not one distinct problem. 

And I think that's where people like us and our pit ponies sit there and then start to gaslight ourselves because it isn't one distinct, critical moment. It's a whole pile of little things. And when you take those, in inverted commas, little things, somebody said something, it didn't feel right. 

Somebody's not quite treating me the same as they were. In isolation, they sound really petty, but you tie them all together and they build a picture that creates the situation where people end up with PTSD. That's very real. 

And it's very problematic. Sorry, I'll get off this notebook. No, no, I think what you said... Sorry, go on, Emma, you talk.

I just, I just want to kind of say, like, I've mentioned lots of people in my story. And I almost don't blame them personally. That head of department that sent me back to teach, she was feeling the same pressure that I was feeling, that she had to get her department teaching and she had to do, like, yes, okay, she didn't handle it right in the moment.

She should have safeguarded me. But I don't blame her personally. I got on well with her.

Because it's systemic. Yeah. And I just kind of want to highlight that because anyone that's listening, it's not about those individuals, it's about the system. 

And that's really important for me to highlight. Yes, it's really timely that today, Sunday, the 18th of May, right, this morning, I got up, pottering about in the garden because it's lovely. And I'm looking at some of the posts that come on Life After Teaching. 

And somebody put a post on saying, I got what I needed from this group. Thank you very much. But it's starting to trigger me now. 

Okay. There are good schools out there. There are some wonderful experiences in teaching. 

And I think that the essence of the post was thank you. But this has almost become an echo chamber now for the world of teaching. And yes, it is an echo chamber. 

It is. There's no two ways about it. It's a bloody big one. 

There's an awful lot of people putting an awful lot of posts on saying the same, if not dissimilar things day in, day out. And then one of the group members started talking about teachers moaning. Now, I was very measured, very measured because they talked about teachers moaning.

And that's a teacher talking about other teachers. And if we're not careful, that's the gas lighting from within. I don't give a bugger if the group member's listening either, because we're not moaning, for God's sake. 

And I think that's the important balance for Emma's experience. It's not... It's not personal. For Emma's experience, it's not personal. 

My experience, it was distinctly bloody personal. Other people... So, and I think that that cycles back to it's not just a one size... Oh, dog. It's not just a one size fits all problem within the education system.

Everybody's experiences are slightly nuanced. There's commonalities. There's common threads.

There were... I completely agree with you people, Emma, that there were people that I worked with who, yeah, was not the greatest of professional conduct, but it was because there were existing pressures on them as well. So, you can see why, but it's that distinction of, for you personally, it was not about those individual people. That's your balancing act in your head. 

And I get that, that you don't want anybody who's listening to think that you're being critical of them. That they chose that, that that was who they are to their core. Yeah. 

Well, we've almost done our epilogue there. That was, that was just brilliant. Emma, it's been so thought-provoking, what you've said. 

It really, really has. And there'll be a lot that comes from this, particularly with my self-reflection as well. So, after the third, fourth, fifth attempt of me getting you there, you've left the classroom, right? You've got this wonderful world that you're doing. 

You're leading this great team. And you left in December 2023. So, running alongside this, you're tutoring, you suddenly realise there's no ceiling to my skills. 

So, you veer off and you enter into the world of marketing as well as a mentor. Tell us a little bit about that. So, when I left in December 23, and I was completely focused on the business, I managed to triple our revenue in 12 months. 

And people were starting to ask me how I was doing it, what I'd done. And basically, it was marketing. It was shouting about the business, shouting about what we were doing. 

So, I started helping people and just helping my friends that were running other businesses. And then I did a course that made me think twice about it and realised that actually, it was the second arm of Core Plus Tuition. So, it's the same business. 

It's a marketing mentor that runs under Core Plus Tuition, but the brand is Make Your Marketing Count. I run a free Facebook group where I do mini trainings every week to help people with their marketing without it feeling overwhelming, which is all the same values as Core Plus, it's all got to be manageable, it's got to not overwhelm. And I run courses to help people advertise on Facebook organically, and I've got plans to expand it even more going forward.

Absolutely golden, golden, golden. Because that person who was recognised in 2011, is still standing. It's still standing, your skills are there, the passion. 

Sometimes you have the stuffing knocked out of you, and that's why these stories are so important and so valuable. So, right, love, with that in mind. Am I allowed to ask what a sliding door story is, Sarah, yet? Or have I jumped in too soon? Am I getting a bug myself? Is it okay to tell listeners that actually we've been texting each other and I've just been going, no, not yet, Sharon. 

You've not mentioned marketing. I'm like, bloody hell. Do you know what it is in an era, right, in an era of transparency? It's a glorious day. 

I could sit and talk here all day, right? We have got another recording after this. And do you know the only thing that's on my mind at the moment? We're going for a curry tonight. So, I keep getting distracted because I'm not quite sure what I'm going to have for my tea.

So, do forgive me. Hello, loyal listeners. This is a little plea on behalf of myself and Sarah to donate a few pennies to the Pit Pony Podcast Production Fund. 

Sarah's taken to selling her cure records on eBay to fund the episodes. So, see the Buy Us The Coffee link in the notes below and save her collection of Robert Smith's warblings for us, will you? Thank you. So, this month I have gone back to school number three and I am now tutoring in school number three as a contractor and as are my tutors. 

So, there's two of us that are going in at the minute and working with a student. And it's a sliding doors moment because I'm in control. I am the one that gets to decide when I go in. 

I'm the one that gets to decide how I work with the student. I'm the one that gets to safeguard the student to my expectations. And that's all because of the journey that I've been on.

That is beautiful, isn't it? Because you're still doing exactly what you would you've got the school, you're still able to contribute to that community, those kids. It's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful and incredibly well deserved.

Is that the last sliding door story? Have you just got one sliding door story? There's so many. No, if you have, that's great. Because what I didn't want to do is say, thank you very much for joining us. 

And then you say, actually Sharon, I've got another sliding door story. No, no, that's that's the one at the minute. There'll be an on in the last minute.

And can I thank you because you've shouted out the world of tuition that means so much to us. You are giving back to that community, which is what we're all about. Furthermore, you've talked about, and this is the bit and I want to say it in front of you, not in the epilogue, the thought of watching us in those very bleak moments of your life, hearing our voices, listening to what we've got to say is an absolute privilege to have been able to do that. 

And I really want to acknowledge that because you'll never know the impact of hearing something like that, what it has on us personally. So Emma, on behalf of all of our listeners, Sarah Dunwood and everyone involved in the production, I want to thank you for your time today. You've been an absolute rock star.

Thank you both for your part in my journey and for having me on today. Hi friend. What a cracking episode. 

So much came up for me there, you know, and I want to, I want to pinpoint you right back to something really insightful. For a long time, people have been talking about the post office scandal and drawing parallels to the world of teaching. And the parallels they draw, in my opinion, is the devastating impact on families and lives and individual stories. 

And I want to make it absolutely clear in no way am I saying that the outcome and the impact of systemic failures are different because the human casualty is the commonality. But you hit on something really, really insightful. With the post office scandal, there was one really critical starting point which kicked everything off. 

There was a software failure with the post office branches. Yes, there was the corruption, there was the inability to take responsibility. There was the lying, there was the gaslighting, there was everything.

But the main difference was they could pinpoint it to a piece of software that was not reading the reconciliation till receipts of what was going on in these individual branches. There was a lack of training, all of those things, but it came to one, one moment. You hit the nail on the head. 

You cannot talk about what's going on in the world of teaching and schools at the moment and say it's because of this. Sarah, are you happy to talk about a letter that you wrote? Yeah. Okay. 

Talk us through what you did a couple of months ago, just after the general election. So we put a post by We and Me Me, put a post into the group basically because I'd had enough. And it goes back to something you said in the episode actually, and I want to come back to that. 

The group is an echo chamber by the very nature of who it attracts and no, we're not going to change the name of the group either because fundamentally, the name of the group is still what the group is about. It's about finding the solutions to getting out. And I do want to make the point in case group members are listening to it.

In a group of our size with the amount of posts and comments that go on in a week, we can be topping a thousand posts a week. We can be topping 20,000 comments regularly in a week. Group members only see a certain amount of what actually goes on the timeline unless they specifically go looking. 

We as moderators actually, once it's on the timeline, don't see everything. So I might not see a post that one of the other mods has approved to go on. But within that mix of posts, there is a mix. 

There's the real heartfelt kind of trauma or traumatic situations that Emma's talked about with her. But there are multiple posts where people ask specific advice on getting into tutoring as an example, or how do I do civil service applications, people talking about getting out and the fact that they've gone on a holiday in term time. And it is the balance. 

And that's why we did the podcast as well, was to make sure that we get people who tell the story, but then the other side of it, which is why I text you and don't forget the marketing, because it's that that people need to hear as the antidote to the other stuff. But fundamentally in August to, well, it was August and early September, late July after the election, I felt quite hopeful that maybe there might be an opportunity for some change, for somebody to hear us. So I went out to the group and asked for accounts. 

And basically it was an enormous thread. If I was to write to the secretary of state to education, what do you want me to write to her about? And there ended up being about nine or 10 really common themes that kept coming up. Weaponization of references, the use of support plans to force people out, the stuff that we see constantly in the group.

So I drafted a letter. It ended up as concise as I could get it. It was just shy of 10 pages long and it was the top level stuff. 

And I sent that off at the end of August, 2024. Now something ended up running parallel to this as well. So start of September, if you remember, we were approached by one of the news organizations who wanted to see whether they could pick up on the use of NDAs and things like that and the toxic culture in school.

So what happened was fundamentally, and I never got to the point where I reconciled this in my head, which is why I've never posted it in the group. The letter that I got back in response was two pages. The first page of it, let me find it. 

The first page of it within the first paragraph, I was mansplained to, quite categorically mansplained to. Apologies to the men who are listening to this. But it was, and interestingly, I sent it to somebody a couple of days ago because there is something afoot now. 

And that person read it and came straight back to me and went, oh my God, you were mansplained too. So introductory paragraph, thank you for taking the time to share your members' detailed thoughts on the education system and on the direction it should take in the coming years. That's not what I was doing. 

Their passion for ensuring an equitable and effective education for all pupils is evident. Wait for this line. May I start by explaining that high quality teaching is the factor that makes the biggest difference to a child's education? Really? Really? What a bellend. 

And then it goes on for a handful of paragraphs to tell me that the changes they'd already put in. So the guidance to do with teacher appraisal and capability, which I quite frequently share in the group. National terms and conditions, handbook, training, career progression that they're putting in. 

The statement about Ofsted removing headline grades. The 5.5% pay award that they gave for this September, but they're not giving for this September. And it was dismissed. 

And it wasn't even a response from Bridget Phillipson. It was a response from somebody within the communications team of DfE. So it felt standard. 

It felt like, and it's interesting that this week I've gone out again and said, right, we are doing this now. We have got, we have got some irons in the fire now where we can really start to make a big push on this. And I will come to the group about that in a couple of weeks time when I know it's pinned on. 

But it felt like that standard sort of letter you get from an MP when you write to them that really hasn't got to understanding the heart of what you're saying to them. And it's just a, this is my stock response. I've been on the receiving end of one of those in the past. 

So I was furious about that and, and actually couldn't come back to the group about it because the fury turned into such abject disappointment that I actually sat in a little pool of shame about the fact that we tried. It sounds like embarrassment, isn't it? It's just like, I can't even begin to put that into the group because the fury and all the rest of it. So we've let it stew for a while. 

But anyway, something's come up in the last few weeks. One particular group member has got in touch with me. We seem to have a routine.

We've established some contacts with, with some media that we think might actually be able to do the research and they are interested. And so we go again and we fight. But it was interesting that in the discussions that we've started having with that particular media outlet, they also, and I've been banging this drum forever. 

It's so difficult to, it's so difficult to get to the point of what it is because when somebody wants to deal with something, they want to deal with one thing. They don't want it. They want, they want, and teaching is just like this. 

What's the silver bullet for behaviour? What's the silver bullet for this? Well, yeah, I am going to damn them all. Politicians are the same. What's the one problem where we can fix and get a big headline for? Well, the education system is systemically broken at the moment. 

There are pockets where it's not because there's great leaders and great teams in schools, but systemically there is an evidence base within our group that says it is broken and it's probably heading to the point where it's going to be difficult to put the pieces back together in some sort of coherent thing that still looks like what an education system should look like. So we're on it. But then that comes to something that you said in the episode, which, which is the public perception and also the perception of some colleagues within our own profession that teachers are just moaning because their experience is not the experience of the people who are actually trying to say what is happening to them, tell their experiences, and frankly, I'll make no bones about it. 

Somebody within the profession using the word moaning about another colleague in my mind is a little bit offensive, but it does come to that. That's what public perception is. You only have to look at comment sections under any sort of newspaper article about anything to do with teaching. 

And yes, you'll get lots of people piling on going that they feel really sorry for teachers' behaviour. Some kids' parents need to generalise in. But you'll then also get the people who pile in and go, the usual tropes.

Well, you only work for 38 weeks a year. You get 13 weeks holiday. You only work till half past three, blah, blah, blah. 

And then you get the usual arguments about, well, if it's so easy, come and do it. And it's a vicious cycle of, of nobody's, they're hearing it, but they're not listening to it. And I think what's important is exactly what you've just said, public opinion and the 13 weeks holiday a year, they finish at 10 past three and all that. 

But all the time we've been doing these podcasts and we've got one coming up in particular with Philippa Curtis and Kathy Tyson, bit of a spoiler alert for you there guys, where a film is actually being made of one of our, let me get the order right, they've made the film and we're going to be interviewing her and releasing her podcast of her story. But one of the things going back to the post office scandal was the use of art and storytelling. Because the minute you told the stories of the people who were affected by the systemic failure of the post office, you suddenly had human connection. 

Well, if you've not got human connection MPs, based on listening to these one hour, one hour and a half episodes of people from across the globe, where gender is irrelevant, age is irrelevant, but the heartbreak that sits behind their experiences, particularly in the first half of our recordings, if that is not something that is collected now as a resource to be heard and a film being made, then whilst we can't put it into a document, whilst we can't necessarily give you the evidence, let's face it, we worked closely with Sky News, they released it for 24 hours about NMDAs and it sunk. It went off the news cycle. My dream, if I'm really honest, is for me and a small handful of group members who feel up to it to get in front of the Education Select Committee. 

Because the Select Committees are where cross-party MPs sit and listen to testimonial. And I know somebody picked me up on that word this week in terms of my post and said accounts rather than testimonials, but actually it is testimonial about experience. Testimony. 

It is. It's exactly that. So that's my dream, that we get in front of people and sit and look them in the whites of the eyes and go, no, this is the reality of what is happening to people and this is the very real damage and harm that it's doing to people because she didn't say the word, Emma. 

She didn't say the word, but she said she got in her car and she had a choice. And I know that very well from personal experience. You sit in a space and you have a choice. 

Nobody should be in the place where their mind has been subject to an environment that has made their mind go, these are my two options. And we go back to something else she touched on as well. If you've got a teacher, and let's face it, Emma is not on her own for talking about that. 

If you go through our previous podcast episodes, many, many of our guests have had that moment of choice. Let's take a step back on something else that came out of that episode, because it segues in from, we're putting this in front of adults and our betters. Okay. 

If we're going to take that default position of the politicians and the education select committee and experts, you are fundamentally our betters. And it probably is the time to say, because we're just teachers and it's okay in that circumstance to say, we are just teachers. You should know better.

So where is adult safeguarding in the workplace, in that environment? How is it okay for individuals in positions of authority and responsibility who hold high offices or high positions within schools who completely go, I don't want to hear that. So I'm just going to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to that and not act upon a critical incident. We've had Ruth Perry. 

We've had it. And countless others that didn't make the high profile. There's a guy who spoke at the NUT conference this year. 

And he talked about his suicidal moment as a, when are we suddenly going to go, right? We can't just carry on and ignore this. Because it's too serious. So there is a massive training and education piece that sits around this and that could come out of what we're trying to achieve. 

And then I go to it because my default mode is not pessimism. It's probably realism based on evidence. We all thought collectively as a group of people, the groundswell of support when Ruth Perry took her own life. 

The groundswell of support in the wider education community within our group was, this is shocking. This has got to, absolutely got to cause Ofsted to be to reflect on their own practice. It's got to result in some change there. 

There was a damning coroner's report, damning coroner's report in that regard. And then what was the reality of what happened? Ofsted very quickly pivoted to a response which was, we'll do some training with our inspectors. It was online. 

The slide deck for it was released and I think it was about two hours training. I might be misquoted, but it wasn't substantial. It was not intensive developmental work with people who are going in and by the very nature of their role of putting people, whether they like it or not, of putting people under extreme stress. 

Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be an inspection system. Most professions are subject to audit, quality assurance, scrutiny, whatever we are in our business. We have been for the last four years, but it can be done well. 

It can be done supportively. It can be done with absolute clarity and with consistency and it can be done by people who at their very heart of it, understand that they are working with people. I completely agree. 

And I think in order for your realism based upon experience, not to be a self-fulfilling prophecy where it then comes to disappointment because things just don't happen. We keep talking about the issues. We keep talking about the symptoms, the problems. 

Fundamentally, whilst we believe that education takes place in a building, a building where houses, I'm taking a typical high school in my local area, 3,000 young people between the hours of 8.30 in the morning and 3.30 in an afternoon. They're crammed in. They're rammed into class sizes of 30. 

There is a curriculum that is so outdated. There is an assessment system that doesn't even embrace technology. We are still testing with pens and papers. 

We are not accommodating. We are not putting mental health at the very core of our young people, but we are shoehorning them into English, maths and science with exam papers that are content driven, not skills lab. Until we can sit in front of people and say, throw the baby out with the bathwater and let's start from scratch. 

This is the 21st century and our way of teaching and learning and housing young people has not changed since the Victorian era. Then everything else is white noise because we're trying to fix something that could be better. Look at the home education community. 

Get involved in what those guys are doing. Look at technology. Look at the use of the AI. 

Look at the use of what we can be doing with therapeutic approaches to mental health, through getting children to take accountability and responsibility for their thoughts and actions, rather than saying, right. After 11 years in education, paper two, English language, you're going to have a non-fiction text from the 19th century and a non-fiction text from the 21st. It's absolute nonsense. 

So it's taking a real step back and looking at what we are trying to achieve with the tools you are giving us to achieve it. So until we sit down and really get creative and start to change from the most fundamental basis, which is under no circumstances do I believe that 3,000 young people from one town in one building for six hours a day is the best way to be educating children, then the rest is white noise. Because how can you audit? How can you quality assure what's going on in the very system that is broken? Because you're only ever going to get broken results. 

And as a result, people like our group members, and we've only got a sliver of people who've found us, because there's a world out there that's not even on social media, let's get to the heart of the problem. And the heart of the problem is the way in which we are trying to educate children. It is as simple as that. 

We are not getting the best from the best of us. Young people are brilliant. Young people will run around a classroom and shout through doors if we've set that up for them to do it. 

If we've set them up to not give them the compassion and the empathy and the understanding that there's a human being in that classroom, who's a mother and a daughter. So this is way, way deeper. And we are only going to ever be able to make that change when we do throw that baby out with the bathwater.

And I'd like to believe it will happen in our lifetime. I'd like to believe we can start to see changes. But what I will go back to my friend and leave you on this, is if ever there needs to be a historical footprint of how we've got it so wrong, go and listen to our episodes, because they are there writ large as human stories from the talent that's hemorrhaged from the very, very system they were dedicated to serving. 

Okay my friend, I think, I think our soapboxes have been well and truly trod in that particular epilogue, and I for one feel a lot better for it. Me too. Right, I'll see you on the other side, Po. 

Tra. Thanks for staying with us during another great episode of the Pit Pony Podcast. And on behalf of myself, Sarah Dunwood, Mike Roberts at Making Digital Real, we wish you all the very best and we'll see you soon. 

If you wish to contact me directly for a support session or a clarity call for your next steps, please find my link in the comments below. See you soon.