Posted 29/09/2019
Making Mixed Ability Work in the English Classroom - Guest Blog by Martin Jeeps, Head of EnglishThe Starting Gun It was the day after I had run the London Marathon in 2017 and the last thing I wanted in the world was an after-school staff meeting. To exacerbate matters it was held in a classroom where the only seating option was a stool (at the time it was in transition from an Art room to a Drama room on its way to becoming a Maths classroom now that it isn’t a Science lab anymore) so my legs were particularly unhappy to be present at the meeting and not in an ice bath. On the agenda was setting and in particular whether we should move towards mixed ability classes. High on acid (lactic) I was unusually happy to sit back and listen to the various perspectives. The mathematicians were acutely angry, the scientists were studiously skeptical, the geographers were earth-shatteringly eager. I had done limited research, and keenly aware that you could make research say whatever you wanted to anyway, voted with my blistered feet. Let’s go mixed ability in English and think about it in September once my calf muscles stop throbbing.
