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

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

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.

Publisher

Ben and James: Secondary School Teachers

Category

comedy · education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Apr 2026

Latest episode

26 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

31 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Oct 2026

   Two Angry Men and a Very Clean Fridge

   There's tension in the studio this week. It begins with a disagreement about how to open the podcast, escalates into an argument about the cleanliness of James's car and reaches breaking point when Ben commits the apparently unforgivable offence of cleaning James's office fridge. Along the way, we discuss questionable Christmas jumpers, dirty coffee mugs, the rights of fridge owners and whether doing somebody a favour is necessarily a good thing. Postcard Corner returns with some distinctly u...

2. 

   19 Oct 2026

   Military Calisthenics, Misplaced Planners and an Existential Crisis

   This week, we discover that the secret to success is apparently nine minutes a day. Nine minutes of what? It hardly matters. Whatever your age, whatever your problem, the answer is always the same: perfect. We begin with a missing teacher planner, a colleague in a state of panic, and a remarkably effective system for avoiding messages in your pigeonhole. Then we turn our attention to the increasingly desperate business of promoting this podcast, which has led James into the darker corners of ...

3. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Bowels, Rabbits and the Authority of Shopkeepers

   This week, we reflect on how we became friends, which apparently involved a territorial dispute over who was the funniest person in the room. Somehow, this eventually led to a podcast. We revisit the glory days of hospital radio, including a specially commissioned jingle that hospital management didn't appreciate, and investigate whether a shopkeeper really does have more authority than a teacher when it comes to confiscating Red Bull. There's another postcard, this time featuring an iguanodo...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

15 ratings

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

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.