it always ended up with a few people doing most of the work... This is a common problem with group projects in school. One of the main problems is lack of lead

it always ended up with a few people doing most of the work... This is a common problem with group projects in school. One of the main problems is lack of leadership. The solution: assign a leader. I had a class consisting of 4 projects, 4 people per group, and each project had a designated leader which rotated. These projects were so much easier to manage, because the leader had some authority given by the teacher. He therefore had the ability to delegate responsibility and people would actually do it. In normal groups, even if a leader emerges, they will often be ignored by less motivated students, because their authority is much more tenuous. My point: it helps to have an assigned (and verified by the teacher) leader for a group project.