Best Schools - Headteachers are taking to social media to document the rigmaroles of their lives in a bid to show p

Daily summary of the latest news and opinions from the world of independent education brought to you by Education Advisers...

Headteachers are taking to social media to document the rigmaroles of their lives in a bid to show pupils they don’t have to be perfect.

Sally-Anne Huang, head of James Allen’s Girls’ School in London, started tweeting about the dull parts of her day under the hashtag #Headteachersreallife in a bid to puncture the impossibly perfect version of life people project on social media.

“It stands to reason that, if you are forever pursuing a false, edited ideal and trying to create your own at the same time, mental health and real happiness will often be sacrificed,” she said in a blog post.

“We get told that teachers are role models to the young people in our schools. I’m not sure that extends entirely to headteachers but, in any case, I am going to try to do things differently for a little while.

“If we believe that striving for an impossibly perfect ideal to match those edited online lives is making our students ill, then we should at least offer a more realistic alternative.”

The trend is a response to the growing concerns that overuse of social media is harming pupils’ mental health.

Michael Gove blamed for IB decline by fellow minister by Lord Willetts because he thought it represented ‘rootless cosmopolitan education’

The International Baccalaureate has gone backwards in Britain partly because of Michael Gove’s hostility to the programme when he was education secretary, a former Conservative minister has claimed.

Lord Willetts, who was minister for universities and science between 2010 and 2014, suggested that Mr Gove disliked the IB because he thought it represented “rootless cosmopolitan education not grounded in the history of this country”.

Lord Willetts also said England’s system of narrowing the curriculum at age 16 was “ludicrous”, and that A levels should be broadened out to allow most students to sit exams in five or six subjects.

The number of British schools providing the IB has plummeted over the last decade, although there has been an increase in pupil entries.