Ben and James Could Do Better: Two Teachers, No Idea

Ben and James: Secondary School Teachers
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Ben and James Could Do Better is a comedy podcast for secondary school teachers—recorded somewhere between the staff room, a lukewarm coffee, and a rapidly disappearing biscuit. If you’re searching for a secondary education podcast that actually reflects life in a UK classroom, you’re in the right place. Less phonics and glitter, more behaviour management, GCSE pressure, and the reality of teaching teenagers. With fifty years of combined experience in secondary schools, Ben and James have seen it all—from Progress 8 panic to the chaos of Year 9 on a Friday afternoon. This is the honest, funny take on teaching in the UK, packed with the kind of staff room conversations teachers don’t usually get time to have. Whether you’re an experienced teacher, an ECT navigating your first placement, or just curious about the state of modern education, there’s something here for you. No laminated posters. No inspirational assemblies. No budget. Just real talk about teacher life, workload, behaviour, and surviving the school week. We all went to school.Ben and James just never left.

  1. 6h ago

    Charity Shop Shirts, Unsolicited Advice and Why You Shouldn't Make Fun of the Cleaners

    Ben and James receive some unsolicited advice about how to improve the podcast from someone who hasn't actually listened to it. There's also a charity-shop shirt, an unexpectedly detailed assessment of a window at Montacute House, the return of Ask Ben and the thorny question of what Ben really thinks about primary school teachers. Plus, James continues introducing his family to Ben via audio recording, we revisit some educational ideas that probably should remain in the past, and Ben attempts to tell the story of his mysterious illness before James has somewhere else he needs to be. Another carefully planned episode, then. Ben and James Could Do Better is a comedy podcast about education, work and the other things that get in the way. 📧 bandjcdb@gmail.com 🌐 www.benandjamescoulddobetter.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

  2. Sep 28

    Just Terrible Feedback, an £80 Swim and the Definition of a Complete Waste of Time

    £79 down, gym card uncollected and not a single lap swum. Ben joined a gym five weeks ago. He still hasn't collected his membership card. James, meanwhile, has somehow actually joined a gym and gone to it, which leads to memories of running marathons, arguments about whether either of us has ever been fit, and the disturbing discovery that Ben can apparently let James finish a sentence if he really tries. We also venture into James's increasingly ill-advised attempts to become an internet personality. There are TikToks, YouTube Shorts, approximately four viewers and some valuable feedback from a man calling himself Clem Fandango, who described James's work as "just terrible". We discuss why strangers feel compelled to tell you they hate something, whether James's teeth require professional intervention, and the important distinction between a bad joke and a bad joke that makes your eight-year-old daughter laugh. Then there's another postcard from Montacute House, before Poppy joins us for Ask Ben with an important question: Disneyland or Centre Parcs? Ben has strong feelings about Centre Parcs, enforced jollity and sharing swimming pools with strangers. Finally, we receive an exciting business proposition from someone who believes we "talk about GCSE pressure from the staff room side every week". Long-term listeners will immediately recognise the problem with that statement. There's also an AI science-marking tool, two men who abandoned science A-levels, someone called Dave who may not actually be called Dave, and the inevitable collapse of a potentially lucrative partnership. Find more from Ben and James at www.benandjamescoulddobetter.com Email us at bandjcdb@gmail.com — genuine correspondence, complaints, business propositions and evidence that anyone is actually listening are all welcome. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

  3. Sep 21

    If Now Is Not the Time, All Good.

    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. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

  4. Sep 14

    Unbalanced Diets, Costume Changes and Why Donkeys Don’t Like Pigs

    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. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

  5. Sep 7

    The Antiques Roadshow Dread, "Day in the Life" Delusions, and Why Phil Is Lying

    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. Send us Fan Mail Support the show

  6. Aug 31

    We’ve Gone Video. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

    We’ve gone visual. After months of making an audio podcast, we’ve finally made the jump to video — and it turns out the camera is both a brilliant upgrade and a fairly ruthless truth-teller. Suddenly lighting matters. The room matters. And all those little editing tricks that are invisible in audio become considerably more obvious when there are two faces on screen. In this episode, we talk through the transition from audio to video, including cameras, lighting, editing in DaVinci Resolve, navigating jump cuts, and the surprisingly complicated business of deciding what should actually happen when the camera is switched on. We’re still stubbornly unscripted, although we’re beginning to wonder whether that is actually helping us. We also talk about the practicalities of the move: where you can watch us on YouTube and Spotify, what happens for our audio-only listeners, and why we’re attempting to grow beyond our currently rather modest YouTube audience. James explains the change in workflow from Audacity to DaVinci Resolve, including why video makes jump cuts considerably more painful and why we’re experimenting with built-in breaks, on-screen slates, images and short sound cues. Then there’s the usual business of arguing about what the show actually is. The register goes, because the camera exposes the lie. The postcard survives, because apparently props are powerful. We discuss short-form clips for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, including the joys of trying to make a horizontal podcast work in a vertical world. We also investigate a poster that appears to have booked The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, squeeze in an entirely unnecessary Cardiff City tangent, and receive fan mail from someone who uses our voices as a sleep aid. And, naturally, we end up wondering what exactly a VOD is. We’re still secondary school teachers, and we’re still making it up as we go along. We’ve just decided to turn the cameras on while we do it. So if you’re listening or watching, do some of the heavy lifting for once: tell us what VOD actually means. Get in touch: bandjcdb@gmail.com Website: benandjamescoulddobetter.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

  7. Aug 24

    Back to Skool, Slush Puppies and Summer Holiday Nostalgia

    Six weeks off sounds like endless freedom, but when we actually try to remember our school summer holidays, the picture is oddly specific: a bike you used to ride everywhere, a scooter you couldn't keep up on, and the kind of local roaming that now feels almost unreal. From there, we tumble into the background noise of the time: children's daytime television, cinema trips to town before multiplexes, and that peculiar mixture of boredom and excitement that only summer holidays can produce. Ben also had the surreal experience of spending weekends rehearsing and filming in TV studios, meeting famous presenters, then going straight back to normal life as though none of it was particularly remarkable. Because apparently childhood can involve both riding your bike round the estate and casually wandering around television studios. Then we take a proper nostalgia detour through Wales: Porthcawl, Coney Beach, long seaside walks because someone refused to pay for parking, and the unforgettable combination of cones of chips and Slush Puppies. Eventually, we remember this is supposed to be an education podcast. This week's victim is a "back to school checklist" that apparently knows everything UK parents need to buy before September. We ask what is actually essential, what is just marketing, what schools really expect pupils to turn up with, and whether anyone has ever really misspelt "school" as "skool". If you've got strong opinions about back-to-school shopping, a favourite summer holiday memory, or, like James, you remember watching Ben on the TV on lazy summer holiday mornings in the 1980s, this one might be for you. "Why don't you" leave us a review, share the episode with a colleague or parent, and get in touch. Email: bandjcdb@gmail.com Website: benandjamescoulddobetter.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

  8. Aug 17

    Exam Results, Music Lessons, and a House Trying to Kill You

    A house that “might feature in a gritty BBC drama” is not a metaphor. It’s a running maintenance plan. We begin with a simple question about DIY progress and end up in the strange reality of renovating a house on a budget: windows that should have been fitted by now, a galley kitchen measured up with shaky confidence, and flat-pack units arriving next week whether the timing works or not. If you’ve ever lived with a worktop held up by an appliance, you’ll understand why actually fixing something feels like a breakthrough. Then things escalate into genuine DIY disaster territory. We talk through the chain reaction that starts with a leaking roof and ends with arcing electrics travelling through a radiator in the bedroom, an emergency electrician, and a house full of less-than-beautiful but considerably safer trunking. Add in roofers who quote and then disappear, rotten fascia boards, lingering damp, and the unforgettable moment someone fell through the floor on Christmas Day, and it becomes clear that “maintenance” is sometimes less about making the house look nice and more about keeping it from actively trying to kill you. Eventually, we remember this is supposed to be an education podcast. With this episode landing between A-level and GCSE results days, we turn to exam results and the strange annual ritual of pretending that one set of numbers can adequately describe a teenager. We share our own results-day memories, including the peculiar anti-climax of getting exactly what you expected and the way one grade can somehow become the entire story. Ben also briefly forgets this is meant to be a comedy podcast for a moment and gets properly serious about music education in the UK: what happens when opportunities increasingly depend on parents being able to pay, why that risks making music education elitist, and how much genuine access to music depends on public funding. If you enjoy DIY disasters, education chat, stories of houses held together by questionable decisions, and the occasional postcard-based tangent, this one’s for you. Leave us a review, share it with a friend who’s renovating or waiting on results, and get in touch. Email: bandjcdb@gmail.com Website: benandjamescoulddobetter.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

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Ben and James Could Do Better is a comedy podcast for secondary school teachers—recorded somewhere between the staff room, a lukewarm coffee, and a rapidly disappearing biscuit. If you’re searching for a secondary education podcast that actually reflects life in a UK classroom, you’re in the right place. Less phonics and glitter, more behaviour management, GCSE pressure, and the reality of teaching teenagers. With fifty years of combined experience in secondary schools, Ben and James have seen it all—from Progress 8 panic to the chaos of Year 9 on a Friday afternoon. This is the honest, funny take on teaching in the UK, packed with the kind of staff room conversations teachers don’t usually get time to have. Whether you’re an experienced teacher, an ECT navigating your first placement, or just curious about the state of modern education, there’s something here for you. No laminated posters. No inspirational assemblies. No budget. Just real talk about teacher life, workload, behaviour, and surviving the school week. We all went to school.Ben and James just never left.

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