It's seven o'clock in the morning and, for reasons that James proclaims to be largely Ben's fault, we're already at work recording a podcast.

It's also been quite a week.

We can't really talk about what happened this week, although we can apparently spend quite a long time discussing what sort of window you should receive for the various possible Ofsted judgements.

Elsewhere, James reveals his previous glittering career as an Ofsted data-entry clerk, Ben ruins one of his stories, somebody unsuccessfully attempts to get into the room, and we receive another postcard from James's summer holiday.

Eight-year-old Zach asks Ben his favourite colour, which turns out to be considerably more complicated than it sounds, and we discover that Ben and James Could Do Better is apparently excellent for helping children get to sleep.

And finally, after 25 episodes, somebody has actually emailed the official podcast email address.

They reckon they can get us 20,000 viewers in a week.

Unfortunately, we didn't reply.

If now is not the time. All good.

Find us at benandjamescoulddobetter.com

Email us: bandjcdb@gmail.com

If you do, it's fairly likely we'll feature you on the show. There's not really a lot of competition at the moment.

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Ben and James have moved seats—and somehow this has become a dispute about branding, lighting and whose name should come first. There’s also the small matter of what to call the people following the podcast now that it has cameras. Listeners? Viewers? Consumers? Whatever the answer, there aren’t currently enough of them to require a particularly large collective noun.

There’s new feedback to address too: apparently Ben and James sound the same. Could one of them become more Welsh? To demonstrate his commitment to the problem, Ben has brought a hat.

This episode also sees the launch of Ask Ben. First up is James’s nephew Finlay, the podcast’s self-proclaimed number-one fan, with an important question about Ben’s weekly consumption of food and snacks. His enquiry leads naturally into Ben’s alarming diet, James’s rather contradictory approach to healthy eating and the revelation that a £720 gym membership does not necessarily include attending the gym.

The postcard survives for another week thanks to a visit to the Donkey Sanctuary, a touching story about an unlikely friendship between a donkey and a pig, and Strawberry—the adopted donkey who steadfastly refuses to appear on her own webcam.

Finally, the List promises ten clean-eating tips specifically for teachers. They turn out to be clean-eating tips for absolutely anybody, although “balance, not perfection” feels particularly useful when dinner is followed by twelve Kit Kats.

Can you find us a better list—something genuinely written for teachers, or so spectacularly unsuitable that we need to discuss it? Send it to bandjcdb@gmail.com.

Find out more at www.benandjamescoulddobetter.com.

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That sinking feeling that arrives with the Antiques Roadshow theme tune? We know it well.

By the second week back, the summer holidays can already feel like a distant memory. The first-day enthusiasm has worn off, the timetable has started to bite, and you’ve remembered exactly how many things there are to do before you can even think about getting home.

So we talk candidly about the Sunday scaries and why the return to school can feel like a wave of anxiety, even when we like teaching and care about doing a good job. We get into workload guilt, imposter syndrome, and the strange pressure of feeling you should be “rested” while your brain is already rehearsing lesson one, period five, and everything you did not tick off in July.

From there we spiral, naturally, into Ofsted. The “Ofsted window” becomes our way of laughing at a very real background stress: inspection culture, shifting judgements, and the sense that accountability never quite leaves the building.

We also poke at the unhelpful myth that teachers finish when pupils do, and why the job stretches well beyond the bell with planning, marking, meetings, parental contact, and the endless small tasks that keep a school running.

To make it concrete, we read a Government Get Into Teaching “day in the life of a teacher” schedule and react in real time. Some of it is fair, some of it is wildly optimistic, and the quotes from “Phil”, “Jessica”, “Mike”, “Gavin”, and “Jane” open up a bigger question about how teaching is presented to non-teachers versus how it is actually lived by teachers.

If you’ve made it through the first week back, this one is for you.

If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to Ben and James Could Do Better, leave us a review, and share it with a colleague who is already counting down to half term. And if you’ve got a story about returning to school, Ofsted, workload, or one of those supposedly “typical” days in the life of a teacher, we’d love to hear it.

What part of going back to school triggers your Sunday scaries most? Let us know — we might even read your answers on a future episode.

You can get in touch with us at bandjcdb@gmail.com or find out more at www.benandjamescoulddobetter.com.

Thanks for listening. And remember: it’s only the second week back. There’s still plenty of time for everything to go horribly wrong.

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