It’s that time of the year again, so here are Courseware’s ten resolutions for school managers for 2004.

Learn to use the electronic whiteboard again. Anyone who is honest will admit that this was last year’s resolution as well but the good news is that you’re not alone. Use the ‘small steps’ approach to success. Try, first of all, to set it up so that the lights come on and work your way towards loading one of the naff software packages that came with it or the Duran Duran greatest hits DVD that you got for Christmas from the kids. Then, hopefully, by next Christmas you can try using it in a lesson.

Remember the names of the teaching assistants and attach the right name to the right person. Try not to call them by their children's names as ‘Mandy's mum’ doesn't sound very professional. Take care at end of term parties as the news that you swapped your suit trousers for the head of RE’s flowery skirt will quickly get around the estate.

Invent some new targets and go for them. Try raising the percentage of children taking free school meals by 10%. If OFSTED isn’t imminent aim to do really badly at key stage 3 and watch your value-added rating rise dramatically at key stage 4 when the inspectors arrive in two years time.

Put in an application to become a community school by having a post office or a crèche on-site. If you have a choice, go for the latter as a post office will bring a lot of cranky pensioners in who will just go on about why isn't there more respect and how a firm slap and a Chinese burn never did them any harm. The crèche on the other hand will attract lots of perky young mothers and improve the view from your window!

Self-evaluate how effectively you self-evaluate by monitoring your self-evaluation processes and evaluating the outcomes.

Learn to connect the new projector to the computer for those exciting PowerPoint lessons. As a subsidiary, try not to use such foul language in front of year eight girls and understand that it is quite normal with computers that you have to go back to the beginning, turn everything off and start again whenever any thing goes slightly wrong.

Build community links by letting the local community use the school but watch out for extremist religious groups, survivalists, boy scouts and dodgy classes in weird forms of unarmed combat.

Avoid unnecessary arguments, so let the girls wear trousers, take a relaxed attitude to body piercing or tattoos and don’t make a fuss about the use of the school broadband connection to visit dodgy chat rooms. Now that you've sorted out the staff, don't argue with the pupils either.

Take more exercise by making sure that you teach as far away from your office as possible. Running to lessons after dealing with the problems of stressed teachers will provide those short bursts of hard exercise recommended by the experts these days. Better still, if you're late because of an argument or an emotional crisis, your heart rate will be up before the start!

Prepare for early retirement by calling up the teacher helpline once a week - get the office to put the call through - and asking about cures for stress and impotence. Measure your blood pressure regularly at 2.45 pm on Friday and plot the results on a chart on your office wall. Whenever the opportunity arises make it clear to local authority officers and the governors that you would like to go on until you are at least seventy!