The government just announced the biggest shake-up of school food standards in over a decade. Ice cream is gone. Fruit juice is gone. Deep-frying is banned outright. And every single main meal now has to come with vegetables.

Dylan and Hayden get into what has actually changed, what the old rules really said versus what people think they said, and whether any of this will make a blind bit of difference if schools do not have the kitchens, the funding or the enforcement to back it up.

The free school meals debate gets a proper run out too, after the Green Party called for universal free meals for every primary and secondary pupil in England. London already does it for primaries. Does the rest of the country follow? Or is targeted support for low-income families the better use of the money?

Plus their own memories of school dinners, the very real postcode lottery in quality across English schools, and whether there is any point writing better rules if more than half of schools were not even meeting the old ones.

The consultation is open until 12 June 2026 if you want to have your say.

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A teacher writes in saying she had to be talked out of going into work while ill by her own partner. Not because she wanted to be there, but because calling in sick felt worse than just turning up. Dylan and Hayden know exactly what that feels like, and this one opens a conversation about why sick days in teaching are genuinely broken.

Then a headteacher has announced that all staff are being moved to different year groups in September, nobody wants it, nobody was consulted, and the latest anyone will find out where they are going is the day before the May resignation deadline. Suck it up or leave. Dylan has a view on whether that is acceptable leadership.

There is also a really interesting question about why children's happiness drops so sharply between primary and secondary school, and what secondary schools could actually learn from the way primary works.

The reports question will resonate with anyone in the final stretch of the year. A teacher has been told by leadership that AI cannot be used to help write reports under any circumstances. Dylan and Hayden discuss whether that policy makes any sense, what you can actually take to your head to argue the case, and how to get through reports without losing the will to live.

And the one that might hit hardest. A teacher in their thirties, single, renting, cannot save a penny. Loves the job but is financially stuck. At what point does staying in a job you love become genuinely irresponsible?

Honest, funny, and right on time for this point of the year.

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Dylan watched a video this week arguing that Year 6 teachers should be paid more than everyone else. It sparked a conversation that goes much deeper than pay and gets to the heart of something that genuinely makes Dylan furious: what SATs prep is actually doing to children.

This one is a deep dive. They cover the Year 6 pay debate, whether SATs boosters are ever justified, and the tutoring company elephant in the room. But the real heat comes when Dylan talks about pulling kids out of PE to sit in a dingy room doing a SPaG paper. He has thoughts. Many thoughts.

There is also genuine practical advice for Year 6 teachers in the SATs run-up. How to keep kids calm rather than transmitting your own stress to them, why communal breakfast on test morning works, why you should be telling the kids the toilet procedure, and why familiarising children with test paper format from September is not the same as cramming.

Dylan also makes the argument that the pressure of SATs week is a Year 3, 4 and 5 problem just as much as it is a Year 6 problem, and why leaving it all to the last two terms is a choice the whole school makes together.

Passionate, honest, and genuinely useful if you are in Year 6 right now.

🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!

🔢 Want to boost maths fluency and arithmetic in your school before SATs? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org

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