“You can program yourself to be positive. Being Positive is a discipline … and the more adversity you face, the more positive you have to be. Being positive helps build confidence and self-esteem”
Rick Pitino, University of Louisville Head Basketball Coach

I recognise that as we draw to the end of yet another term colleagues are tired and it is easy to forget what we have achieved together this year. Whatever the critics, the sceptics and the rabblerousers throw at us we have had another great year and this year results will show that when they start to be published later in the Autumn. Not just the GCSE/Level 2/Key Stage results but our attendance and exclusion figures, our latest OFSTED analysis, our healthy schools data, our PE and school sport data, our Stephen Lawrence uptake, our Inclusion Chartermark uptake and much, much more. Colleagues in schools and Education Leeds have had a briliant year and we all deserve a rest and the chance to unwind and recharge the batteries for one last time... and always remember when it comes to judging our successes and failures...

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

Keep the faith

Chris