Today, 25^th January 2023 is the official 10^th birthday of this blog. Earlier this month, I wrote a blog reviewing the past ten years. That was entitled ‘Don’t forget Jacob’ Don’t forget Jacob | John Howson (wordpress.com) as a salute to the, as yet, unsuccessful campaign to ensure all children taken into care or arriving new to an area can be placed on the roll of a school within three weeks, regardless of whether the schools is an academy, free school or a maintained school. Every child has a right to an education with their peers and not just at home supported by worksheets and the occasional visit from a tutor.

Supporting that campaign shows how this blog has evolved over the past decade. Started just to deal with stories around the numbers in education (mostly the school sector) it has taken on a wider role as a consequence of two events in my life. In May 2013, I was elected to Oxfordshire County Council for a North Oxford Division, and for eight years was the Lib Dem spokesperson on education on the county.

In 2015, I helped establish TeachVac, the job board for teachers that has flourished, if measured by the number of users and the data it has gathered, but for a variety of reasons has yet to be a commercial success: perhaps I have had too many other distractions, including this blog, to become a successful business owner.

After, ten years and 1,372 posts (including this one) that have been seen by more than 80,000 visitors from all around the world, I have to decide: what next? Two years ago, I nearly decided to close down the blog as readership had fallen dramatically from around 22,000 visitors a year to just 11,000, but I kept going. Once again, I face the same dilemma. For the past quarter of a century, I have written pieces every week, first for the TES, as it then was, and then for this blog.

Is it time to call a day? I think the unfinished business of inadequate recruitment into teaching need regular highlighting, but NfER and Jack Worth can do that as easily and with better graphics that I can do. Most of the other posts are opportunistic, and some garner very few views; In some cases none at all, as with the post about this blog highlighted above.

So, you may notice that rather than the average of some ten posts a month of the past, the number drops off from now onwards, and I concentrate on other matters.  

Thank you to those that do read the blog. It has been a labour of love to write, and I have never regretted composing these posts, although there are a few that once written never saw the light of day. Finally, last December, someone downloaded every single post that I had written. I would love to know why and what they have done with them? Happy Birthday, and thanks, especially to Frank.