Megan Mansworth is an experienced teacher and leader who has taught English and guided students to achieve outstanding results across a variety of state schools. Megan has been Leader of Research and Leader of English for two different MATs and her writing has been published in national media publications. Megan is currently completing her PhD in Literary Linguistics and of course is the author of top selling book ‘Teaching to the Top’.

💥Could you start by talking us through your journey as a teacher and what you have learned along the way.

💥Your book is called ‘Teaching to the Top’ – what does that actually mean in practice?

💥Teaching is a profession and like any profession you want and need experts. How important is it to build the foundation of developing high-level knowledge and how can we do this?

💥There is continual talk about the level of challenge in the curriculum and pitching up, how do we embed this challenge?

💥A common issue that I have witnessed in classrooms and lessons is a real level of passivity, the teacher working harder than the students etc. What do you mean when talking about thinking hard and how do we get students to think hard in lessons?

💥This is a big question and obviously inspired a lot of the thinking in the book, chapter 4 is about teaching to the top and not to the test, something that schools have been guilty of and some may still be guilty of, so how do we teach to the top and are we not a risk of not meeting expected outcomes if we don’t think of the test?

💥I have a real passion for ensuring that staff understand how and why we make reasonable adjustments for some students, when and where needed. This leads to the chapter you wrote on the dangers of differentiation. What are the dangers and what common errors do practioners make?

💥Due to circumstance, background, parenting and many other factors, some children don’t have the aspiration or drive to reach the top. What would you recommend to school leaders to help them believe that anything is possible?