Professional development, coaching, and consultancy

The Compass

  • AI, Coding, and the Myth of Future-Proof Education

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    Back in 2012, following the launch of one of the very first 1‑to‑1 tablet programmes in a UK school, a parent approached me at the Open Morning event and said, “I love the way you’re preparing children for the future.” I smiled and replied, “I’m not sure we’re doing that. We’re just preparing them for the present.”

    It wasn’t a prepared response, and I didn’t mean to be facetious. I’ve just never thought it wise to plan other people’s futures for them, especially when it comes to children. I’ve always been cautious about projecting my biases onto any prediction. After all, when you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

    That’s why I’ve remained healthily sceptical of concepts like “21st‑century skills”, which often turn out, when scrutinised, to be perfectly timeless ones: communication, problem-solving, curiosity. The sort of skill Cicero might have recognised. In any century, not just the 21st. You see, I’d rather we focus on teaching students what we know today, equipping them with the clarity, confidence and literacy they need to become the architects of their own tomorrow, not the future some old teacher (me!) can imagine for them.

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  • The Fire We’ve Lit

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    I’m not sure I subscribe to the notion that history always repeats itself, but it certainly seems to have a rhythm.

    I’m (perhaps clearly) not a historian, but it is the case that throughout the ages, great technological leaps have brought not only progress, but also destabilisation. Gutenberg’s press democratised knowledge, but it also catalysed the Reformation and decades of sectarian conflict. The sailing innovations of the Spanish and Portuguese unlocked new worlds, but also ushered in centuries of colonisation and enslavement. The steam engine transformed economies and lifted millions out of agrarian poverty, while simultaneously igniting class strife and feeding the greed of new empires, the consequences of which still shape countries around the world, quite literally.

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  • The Wars We Don’t See Coming

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    In geopolitics, it’s often said that generals are always preparing to fight the last war. One of the most infamous examples was the Maginot line in Eastern France: a vast line of fortifications built after World War I to prevent another German invasion of France from the most obvious direction. The only problem was that France built this fortification with the last war in mind, not the next. Germany simply went around it, invading via the Netherlands instead.

    Much of our educational strategy risks resembling the same kind of static defence: we design policies to hold back yesterday’s threats, while today confronts us with goalposts that are constantly shifting. Many schools, especially those in which the once solid pillar of tradition no longer bears weight, struggle to read the runes of change. But change is coming. To paraphrase William Gibson, perhaps it’s already here, just not evenly distributed. Unless we accept this uncertainly and ready ourselves to grapple with its implications, we may find ourselves blindsided by crises we didn’t imagine but could have anticipated.

    Here are five “wars” I believe we’re not yet seeing clearly enough, but which are already gathering momentum.

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  • One Compass, Two Directions: Reflective Questions That Guide Student Learning and Growth

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    The more I pursue my interest in executive coaching, the more I realise how deceptively simple a good question can be. When asked casually, it might elicit little more than a shrug. But when framed with care, it can unearth important realisations. And when asked with precision and purpose, it can shift the course of a conversation, or even a young person’s sense of themselves.

    In a recent article on generative thinking and questioning (complete with a free downloadable resource), I explored how better classroom questions can prompt deeper thought, nudging students to reflect, connect, and stretch their understanding.

    The quality of these questions matters because they shape the climate in which learning and behaviour unfold. Crucially, they also communicate, implicitly or otherwise, what we believe our students are capable of.

    This article, then, explores how reflective, purpose-driven, coaching-style questions can be adapted for both academic and pastoral contexts to help students develop greater self-awareness, self-regulation, and metacognition, so that they are more likely to become agents of their own improvement.

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  • The Leadership Compass: Developing Capacity From Within

    Supporting schools, educators, and organisations to lead with clarity, teach with impact, and grow with purpose

    José Picardo

    This post is a lightly edited transcript of my presentation at ResearchED Bournemouth on Saturday 7 June. In it, I explore how we can grow leadership capacity in schools, not through roles or titles, but through the everyday conversations and habits that shape culture of a school. The talk draws on coaching principles, research evidence, and practical experience to offer a more human, sustainable vision of school leadership.

    I’ve worked in and with a number of schools now, and there’s a pattern I’ve seen more than once. It starts when leadership stops listening.

    At first, it’s subtle: line management becomes checklist-driven, staff voice is limited to a yearly staff survey with opaque outcomes, and decisions start arriving fully formed. Over time, people stop speaking up, not because they don’t care, but because they don’t feel it will make a difference. They have lost agency at this stage.

    You see, leadership isn’t only about making decisions. It’s about creating the conditions where others can, where people feel seen, heard, and able to apply agency from wherever they stand. That is what I mean by developing leadership capacity.

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