James Ellery

James teaches GCSE English and 11+ preparation, which are less different than they look. A pupil who plans for five minutes writes a better paragraph than one who starts at once, and he will defend those five minutes even when the clock is running.

With 11+ candidates the work is mostly comprehension and the odd art of answering the question printed on the page rather than the one in your head, plus the vocabulary that entrance papers assume a ten-year-old has met and often has not. At GCSE he works through language and literature papers with the mark scheme open, so a pupil can see exactly which words earn credit and which are decoration.

He reads drafts back aloud, in a flat voice, on purpose. Nothing is more useful. Hearing your own sentence read badly is the quickest way to find the comma that should have been a full stop, and it costs nothing. Lesson notes are recorded and sent home, and parents get our progress reports so the same targets are being chased between sessions.