Pay attention at the back of the class, Mr Balls

When I first met John Abbott 20 years ago he told me a story: as a young teacher at the prestigious Manchester Grammar School he had led several expeditions of boys to study agriculture in rural pre-revolutionary Iran.

After a week the village headman felt he knew John well enough to ask him a difficult question: ‘These young men,’ he said, ‘they are so tall, so strong, so beautiful. But what use are they? They cannot reap, they cannot ride a donkey, they cannot make a fire, they cannot even sew or sweep or cook like our girls.’

This stopped young Abbott in his tracks. The Iranian headman had a point! Teenagers must be stretched, they need diverse experiences to jolt them out of apathy and into learning mode. And so for the last 40 years Abbott has been trying, with terrific vigour, to change the way we teach.

He has drawn on anthropology, neuroscience and his own decades of experience to prove his point: that we have misunderstood the nature of adolescence.