Have you read Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel 'The Truth'. The book is set in the newspaper industry and it's a great read... it paints a really wonderfully funny picture of the newspaper industry.

I don't know if you saw the Evening Post on Friday but it contained the usual mix of praise and criticism: the fantastic 'Leeds School Meals Strategy' and the horrendous secondary schools contextual value added results. As always with journalists you get a strange mix of fact and fiction, the accurate and the inaccurate, the up-to-date version of the truth and the strangely twisted history... hard to know what is the truth!

What really makes me cross is the negativity, the lack of balence and the ignorance. I am incredibly proud of the work that our secondary schools have done to transform outcomes for our young people... and yes we still have a lot to do, particularly for the young people who are disengaged, disinterested, disempowered or simply not there. I know that the journalists and others will say that they are there to hold us to account and to report the news. All I ask is that we have intelligent systems of accountability, intelligent and informed politicians and journalists who understand the issues they are talking about and most of all, in that balanced coverage, recognition for the talented colleagues in our secondary schools for the real impact they are making every single day.
Chris