In this episode Matt and Femi speak to former pupil Amelia. Although Amelia has just finished her A-levels, they mainly discuss secondary school, and are broadly inclusive of all subjects and not just maths. As you will hear, Amelia is extremely qualified for this role – in addition to being incredibly intelligent, both her parents are in education and so she enjoys, and is well versed in, discussing school matters. The discussion is presented in two parts, with the second featuring in Episode 21.
In this episode they discuss the student view of attending an inner city school with some challenging student behaviours and a high rate of teacher turnover, some characteristics of good teachers, how the differing nature of various subjects lends them to be more or less engaging and more or less easily disrupted by poor behaviour, immediate feedback and the motivating effect of that, the emotional consequences of describing topics in terms of their GCSE grade or level of difficulty, and Amelia's experience of the More Able programme and how that was managed in lessons.