Ed - why had you eaten Reg Vardy's in the first place?!

Regarding books - I came out of teaching nearly 20 years ago, and the books were pretty dire, so I'll concede that they may have improved.

Regarding class size, I had to cope with classes of 40 plus... the one-to-one approach some pupils needed was often impractical, but I gradually built up the trust needed to allow them to 'self-monitor' their work (at least, that's what they thought!) to give me the breathing space I needed for the slower ones.

Admittedly there is more scope for that in Maths - 'right' or 'wrong' answers. My pupils would have access to cards with the answers on them, but there would always be a point where no answer card was available, and I'd have to mark them - if they were cheating they'd be caught out, and have to repeat the lot! They soon realised cheating got them nowhere, which was a useful moral lesson, too!

Even with smaller classes I think I would still use that approach, because of the many advantages it offers.