NCELive

NCELive is a conversation show about the working life of schools: who stays, who leaves, who leads, and what it costs the people doing it. Nick and Rachel host, and many guests arrive as people they already know well. Andy Buck, a former head teacher, is welcomed back as a personal friend and longtime mentor. Agnes Cserhati gets a similar introduction, and Ben Barton comes on as Nick's colleague and resident 'statto'. That closeness shapes how the show sounds. The introductions are warm and teasing, and guests answer in kind, as when Mary Myatt promises 'fluent drivel' before explaining why she renamed her online platform. Under the easy manner, the subjects are serious. The recruitment and retention conversation with Ben Barton turns to a school in Felton that has linked itself to the community around it and grows its own students into its next teachers. The same discussion raises the idea of a school keeping its own social worker as a steady link with families. With Dr Emma Kell and Clemmie Stewart, a talk about engaging parents and carers reaches the emotional toll on senior leaders, including a hungry child and a student who disclosed plans to take his own life. It is candid, and it names the exhaustion that follows. Other episodes focus more on the craft of leading. The conversation with Agnes Cserhati offers 'deliberate calm and optimism', framed not as faking but as knowing that people watch a leader walk out of a bad meeting and assume the worst. Andy Buck takes a body of research on performance conversations and keeps it simple: mind your p's and q's. With David Harkin, the talk turns to entrepreneurship and career education, and to whether screens in the classroom after the pandemic can help teach what has long been hard to teach. That conversation also holds that teachers are already being asked enough. Mary Myatt's appearance, from the show's second season, is about putting work out before it feels finished and fixing mistakes in the open. Several episodes are recorded live, with colleagues in the room and others catching the recording later. The sign-offs keep the school calendar in view, with nods to half term, Christmas and break duty in the wind and rain. A good first listen is the Agnes Cserhati episode for leading under pressure, or the Andy Buck one for anyone who runs performance or post-observation conversations.