As a teacher I think I could make pretty much any lesson work with only 9 pupils as per your illustration. This is not new by the way - go into any school and look at tables arranged in horseshoe shapes to eliminate the back row and allow the teacher to move round the room and see everyone clearly.

Alison, MK, UK

People are still withdrawn and inarticulate in this seminar setup, you know, as I've seen from 4 years at university...

Bianca S, Paris, France

Go and educate yourself. "A wise man learns from his mistakes. A wiser man however learns from the mistakes of others before him" If you don't learn about the past, how do you know to avoid mistakes others have already made? We would still be primitive if everyone had your attitude.

Yasmine, Oxford,

This might work with A level classes, which tend to be smaller, but HOW can this work with classes of 30 pupils? As well, in my experience as a student, precious few seminars are now small enough to allow this kind of teaching, they are lectures with pupil presentations at the end of the course.

Helen, Sheffield, UK

There is no doubt that the Harkness method is effective, but hey - how many comprehensive school teachers would give their eye teeth to have a teaching group of only 14 students? It could well be that, in reality, this will be something else for the privileged minority in the private sector.

Tony Mercer, Newbury, UK

This common sense approach to sixth form teaching has been used in state schools for years., without the need for expensive visits to the USA. How can Wellington College be so far behind? Antony Seldon pontificates on British education, not understanding that the average secondary class size is 30

Douglas Kedge, Sonning Common, UK

What this fails to take into account is this style of learning relies on participants to have done background work and preparation in their own time. School children who don't want to contrebute are still able to simply, not do the prep. This undermines the whole intention of the scheme.

Adam Wright, Stoke-on-Trent, UK

Paddy- thats exactly the attitude NOT TO HAVE! All subjects are important. English literature is a lovely subject and only those that are ignorant have no respect for our history or literature. In order to be a rounded individual, students should be offered the choice to study these subjects.

Jane, Kent, U.K

I have taught in some of the toughest schools in England and Australia. The new "Method of Teaching" that rears it's ugly head every 3 years simply replaces another failed method. It's quite simple: every child, classroom and school is different. A good teacher knows this and changes accordingly.

George Scicluna, Geraldton, Australia

1. This "new" method has been around for roughly 8 decades. 2. Any method will work in a class of about 14 students. But in real life classes are much larger.

eva, Vienna, Austria

We've all been to school and we all know that a bad teacher can't teach and a child that doesn't want to learn won't, so nothing will be different here. It's just another trendy policy to further damage education, the same as all the others that we've been burdened with over the last fifty years.

Chris, Derby,

If they continue 2 have subjects such as English Lit. & history then no matter what format is used u will not have general interest shown - what has Shakespare or Julius Caesar got 2 do with anything n life other than ones ability to quote it n conversation. And who cares who killed who 100yrs ago?

Paddy, Cork, Ireland

I don't quite know what a "Boardroom style seminar" looks like - most Boardrooms I have attended have been playing the blame game - Marketing v Production v HR and everyone ganging up on Finance. This is not new - I remember sitting around a table studying A level English texts in the 1970's

Jeremy Noble, London,