“Thought we were in trouble there for a minute!”

Butch and Sundance find themselves surrounded by a posse of armed US agents in Bolivia.  Wounded, holed up in a shack, they face a hail of bullets if they emerge.

It can feel like this in school with staff surrounded by difficult issues everywhere they turn.  Teachers with competing demands and deadlines to meet. Pastoral staff with too many children to support and too little time.  Family and financial problems everywhere.  Headteachers with huge demands from government, parents, staff and students and increasingly limited budgets.  

The film is a superb buddy movie, starring two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Robert Redford and Paul Newman (people say I have a passing resemblance to Robert Redford…)  

When the going gets tough for the anti-heroes, they fall back on their comradeship and a shared dream about the future, however improbable.

A bit like the best schools, really.