This issue's problem:Joe Priestley is having problems providing sufficient challenge for the higher attainers within his mixed ability groups

Joe Priestley has settled into his training placement very well and has impressed other members of the history department with his lively and engaging ideas.

In his early teaching he was encouraged to work within the department's existing schemes of work, but more recently his mentor has encouraged him to focus on redeveloping sections of their Year 8 scheme of work, to try to create a rather more coherent overview of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (which had previously tended to feature only in relation to the transatlantic slave trade and the struggle for reform of the franchise). Joe's ideas in responding to this challenge seem to have been both popular and effective, but his mentor, Bill, fears that this superficial success may be masking some important weaknesses...