IF you have more than one student in a class, you have mixed ability. It’s one issue that every adult education tutor dreads.

It is taken for granted today that educational opportunity doesn’t end with full-time education. This is fine, but it does challenge adult education tutors to find a way to deal with the problems inherent in mixed-ability classes - not least, the ease with which a tutor can be seduced into favouring the more able students.

Why would a tutor do this? Well, there are payoffs for the tutor who favours the more able. The desire to attain these is largely subconscious, and hence all the more insidious.

First, focusing on the more able students increases interest. I teach creative writing to adults. I love discussing writing, particularly with others on the same intellectual wavelength. Naturally, there is a temptation to devote most of my time to students who produce work which arouses my interest, not those who struggle to express themselves. But both groups have paid to join my class, and have the same moral entitlement to my time. As tutor, it’s my responsibility to be aware of the temptation to favour one group, and consciously resist it.

Second, favouring the more able students can boost a tutor’s ego. If your students are making rapid, measurable progress, that proves you must be a good teacher. Never mind that little Jenny who sat at the back hasn’t been seen for three weeks. She was never going to be a writerartistpotter anyway.

All adult education tutors know students who return term after term - either to the same class or to others within the same educational institute. Why do students do this? Because they enjoy what they’re doing, which is linked to how much attention they receive.

In Games People Play - The Psychology of Human Relations, psychologist Eric Berne explains that we all have a need for “stroking” - a stroke being a unit of social interaction carried out with one idea at its heart: recognition. Literal stroking and caressing are behaviours reserved for close relationships. In most encounters, we have to substitute verbal stroking for physical stroking.

Examples from everyday life include “Hi, how are you?”, or “How was your holiday?” We all have a hunger for recognition, which, Berne tells us, is related to the desire to recapture the experience of being handled by our parents in infancy. This is a crucial component of human interaction in the relationship between teacher and pupil.

If this need for recognition is ignored, there is no relationship. And, if you are an adult student faced with a tutor who does not attempt to enter into any bond of common humanity, where’s the incentive to attend at all?

Students whose needs are not being met will drop out. The consequences of this may include the cancellation of the class mid-term because the local authority’s budget precludes it paying a tutor to teach such a small class. In addition, the student who drops out may decide not to enrol again. If this happens often, it prejudices that particular adult education programme, not to mention the tutor’s employment prospects.

As tutors, we have a moral responsibility to give of our best to all our students. Lack of student satisfaction means we are not fulfilling that responsibility.

Awareness is the key. We must always question what we are doing, and most importantly, why we are doing it. That means making sure that we devote as much time and attention to students of lesser ability as we do to more able students.

Then, we may be pleasantly surprised by the speed of progress of our less able students. Which, for a tutor, must be the ultimate in job satisfaction.

Katrina Crosbie is an adult education tutor of creative writing.