At junior school I was considered very able, polite and well behaved. But my secondary career went steadily downwards, and I left without completing my A level course. I never understood why until I read Prof. Dweck's material.

At secondary school, I never did any homework. You may find this hard to believe, but it happened - and I was still considered a top pupil! This meant that by the time I finished my O-levels, I had almost no skill at self-studying. I literally could not revise - I had no idea how.

In some courses, I didn't need to take the homework home. Maths, or English; I could complete the entire lesson often in half the time that the teacher had allotted. This left me plenty of time to complete the previous homework before handing it in. The same was generally true of the sciences.

Which left things like Geography and History. In the early years, these courses were basically english comprehension lessons - read and understand and precis. No problem - again I usually knocked them out before the end of the lesson, or sometimes during a break time.

Later, as the courses began to require work that I simply didn't put in to them, I became poorer and poorer at the topic.

Art - well I knew I was no good at art, and never tried.

Music - I knew I was brilliant at music, so I never tried.

Why was I allowed to get away with this? Well, I was still very high ability in Maths and English, as well as Physics (basically applied maths) and Chemistry. I would consistently score very highly in every test applied. So the staff were clearly driven by a desire to see me scoring highly in tests - rather than developing the ability to study. As long as I kept scoring so well in those "core" subjects, what did it matter?

Very late in my school career I found out that the school had conducted IQ tests on the pupils in my first or second year of attendance, and I had achieved a score of 150, which was considered one of the highest the school had measured.

None of this made much sense to me then or since, until I read Mindsets and discovered that I had simply developed into a fixed mindset - and that clearly some or all of the teachers around me also had a fixed mindset. It didn't matter that the opinion of me was that I was high ability; the problem was that I and the school (and no doubt my parents) all thought of this as in-born talents and gifts.

To this day, friends who achieved degrees still describe me as being a genius; one has been a maths teacher for fifteen years and I suspect he still harbours a secret admiration for my maths "ability" - but I have none. The little maths I learnt for my A levels is largely lost now.

But now, approaching forty, I have discovered that adopting a growth mindset can have dramatic positive impacts on my life. And I can see the positive impact on others around me when they are in a growth mindset.

And the funny bit?

At my house, there were books everywhere, and being the youngest of four children I tended to play alone quite a lot. This often meant reading and doing puzzles. In fact we had a book of puzzles - IQ puzzles in fact. I used to spend hours working my way through that (and other) puzzle books.

I had a high IQ because I practised it a lot!

Please learn for yourself what the fixed and growth mindsets are - my testimony is that it is a positive thing.

And as for the Dispatches program on Channel 4 - its not the school size that matters guys. Its the mindset! Look at the evidence and judge for yourself.