mixed ability for English - just why?

Yes Kesstrel. The new buzz word is maths 'mastery'. Tight progression and teaching until mastery seems to be the way things are going. Rumour has it that we will all be teaching from the same text books next year, though there does still appear to be a place for creativity in problem solving. I'm reserving judgement for a while until I've seen it in action.

There is also, as I pointed out in a previous post, the issue of teaching methods. In Finland, where the maths results are very high, they don't use setting (although they do have separate classrooms for SEN). But their teaching methods, especially for maths are very traditional, with a lot of emphasis on direct instruction, worked examples, and practice. Similar things could be said about Shanghai teaching methods.

the fact still remains that 90 - 95% of the cohort are taught together!

www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/15/china-end-discrimination-exclusion-children-disabilities

"Currently, children with disabilities are excluded from mainstream schools unless they can demonstrate the “ability to adapt” to the schools’ physical and learning environment."

But we are not talking about rural China, we are talking about Shanghai and Singapore. Maybe their kids with major SEN are elsewhere, but the fact still remains that 90 - 95% of the cohort are taught together! highly successfully. So successfully in fact that the government has just paid for 66 teachers from the most successful schools in the country to go to Shanghai for 2 weeks to shadow their teachers and those same teachers are coming to this country later in the year to spread the expertise.

Interesting that in the government's favoured countries/places for maths education -Shanghai, Singapore and other Pacific rim, where maths results are excellent, there is no setting.

All of those education systems have no truck with "inclusion", so the ability range is instantly narrowed by the absence of children with special needs from the classroom (schools in rural China will be more inclusive, but not in a good way: they simply can't afford to do anything else. And no-one is suggesting that rural China provides a model for much of anything). They are extremely centripetal societies, so any classroom will be socially homogenous, and they have little mainstream support for people who are not native speakers, so there is no equivalent of EAL provision in mainstream schools.

If British classrooms could exclude everyone who has special needs and everyone who is not a native speaker, and operated schools which drew from very small, very homogenous geographic areas, would you still claim they were "mixed ability"?

Interesting that in the government's favoured countries/places for maths education -Shanghai, Singapore and other Pacific rim, where maths results are excellent, there is no setting. All children work in mixed ability classes with some differentiation but not as we know it - no high table and low table. Our very high performing local teaching school (primary) has scrapped setting in maths this year. Just countering the argument that as setting is good in maths it must be good in English. Setting is not necessarily good in maths either.

Brenda

Does the school start to set for English at any point later on? Or will your daughter, like mine, still be in mixed ability classes for GCSEs? If so, I would find a tutor now, unless you are able to support her yourself.

It's worth remembering that many teachers and schools that boast of the success of their mixed ability classes and excellent results at GCSE are actually buoyed up by an unseen layer of private tutoring: around 25% of families nationwide use private tutors.

I agree completely!

Well yes, I take that on board. But the question of right/wrong answers seems to me a bit confused when people think about English lit.

'Just because there's no right answer doesn't mean there aren't a lot of wrong ones'!

But it's not the same as saying, "the answer is 23." Often there are endless possible "right" answers. We all have different favourite books, etc. When I say subjective, I don't mean that there aren't grammar rules, correct spellings, rules for punctuation, or even a general consensus on what an essay that hangs together should sound like. Just that it's not as black and white as lower level maths is. For instance, I feel sure I could find examples of well respected classic books that wouldn't be rated a NC level 5 because they fail to use a semicolon once, etc.

Yeah, but the problem is it's not inherently subjective! It's just that most people think it is.

I do think there's a lack of respect for and understanding of the subject, definitely.

You make a good point. steamingnit. Is the lack of setting in English compared to maths a lack of respect for the subject? Or a symptom of the fact that English is inherently subjective and therefore confusing, even for the folks in authority. (Maths must be so much easier to mark and set.). I'm not sure what I think.

For me, a strict utilitarian view, that is doing what is best for the majority, doesn't work here. Each child gets one chance to go through secondary education. So, each child should be treated as an individual with independent value and worth. Each child should be an end. No child should be treated as a means to an end.

not an (already privileged) minority.

Oh, I think you've made your position entirely clear, thanks.

I think there is a real problem about English generally in England, and by that I mean the teaching of, the public expectations about the exams in and the curriculum for. I think that's why it's often deemed important to set for maths but not English, and also probably why so few year 6s get level 6 reading/writing.

There is a sense that anyone can do fine if they are willing to share their thoughts and feelings and bang on about What a Reader Might Think, and it's balls. If we need to set and stretch in maths, and offer challenging work, we need to do the same in English.

Why are you putting "the majority" in speech marks? When we mean, in fact, the majority? As in the most people, as in an actual and important thing.
And they should stay in my classroom, because I cater for their needs well. And they should stay generally in mixed ability classrooms, because schools have to be organised somehow, and surely that organisation should, indeed must, be geared towards the advancement of the general good, the maximisation of benefit to the majority, and not an (already privileged) minority. I can never feel ashamed of saying this.
Yes, the OP is entirely right to challenge what sounds like poor teaching for her daughter, and I really hope this issue gets sorted for both of them.

I think you are all arguing about the wrong thing.

This shouldn't be about mixed ability classes being better or worse. It should be about the fact that OP's daughter finds the lesson depressing, awful, boring. And the teacher should not be teaching a lesson which is so completely unsuited to at least 10 percent of the class, even allowing for the fact that Brenda's daughter might be a genius, which she has not in any way suggested btw, just stated that she is upper end (so let us say 25 percent of the class unless the intake is radically skewed)

This isn't an ideological discussion. This is about Brenda's daughter, who should be enjoying her English lessons for Goodness Sake.. English should never be boring.

If mixed ability teaching helps the majority of children, then by definition (almost) it is a good thing,

I'll ask again: why, in that case, should the more able stay in your classroom, if you regard their interests as secondary to "the majority".

I don't think it is as simple as just expecting the high ability pupils to "bring on" the low ability.

So if, as you imply, high ability pupils benefit from mixed ability teaching, why doesn't even research with a pre-existing ideological bias in favour of it claim that?

I'm not about to tell the "most able" that their aspirations aren't important. As I said, I think (not to sound cocky, am sure that I don't do it perfectly at all times, being human) that I generally differentiate quite well, in my own classroom. In particular, I do well by the "most able", according to the results my students have achieved (not that exam results are the only fruit).
But just as the "most able" shouldn't feel ripped off, nor should any of the other children, surely? Can't shake my ethical conviction that we should do what's best for the majority, if and when one knows what that looks like. If mixed ability teaching helps the majority of children, then by definition (almost) it is a good thing,

Surely that is the whole point of a mixed ability class that even the low ability children have something interesting to contribute even if their writing or reading is deemed of lower ability. They may have good ideas (my son certainly did) which they couldn't get down on paper. I don't think it is as simple as just expecting the high ability pupils to "bring on" the low ability.

I think that whatever your child's ability you can pull them up on differentiation. If the lesson does not cater to your child's ability high OR low it is not a very good lesson.

And tbh you can teach very exciting lessons to low ability children using interesting texts/classics and that should not be a reason to hold off.

If my child didn't understand the lesson because it was too hard I had no hesitation in calling the teacher and querying the homework on the basis that my child did not understand what they were supposed to do. The teacher, who was NQT explained his reasons for the homework and gracefully accepted he had NOT differentiated sufficiently or explained it properly to my ASD child.

In a similar vein you should have no hesitation in asking the teacher to set more challenging tasks IN CLASS for your daughter or explain himself/herself. He should be able to justify the classwork. Or he/she is a bad teacher.

Doh! typed not toyed.

Um, typing on mobile devices with kids running amuck...wish I had toyed "are" rather than "is."