Mixed ability teaching vs sets

too stressful for who?

not for a teacher - believe me teaching a literacy based lesson like a humanities subject to a class of 30 in a 4x4 room who range from struggling to write their own name to a* level is whilst to busy trying to deal with behaviour to be able to get to individuals to help them with their learning needs is stressful.

stressful for the kids too.

To set every subject will too much too stressful.
why?

My dd's school sets eng & maths only. I think that enough. To set every subject will too much too stressful.

i don't think it's teachers pushing this agenda tbh. the trouble is we went for 'inclusive education' by putting all of the needs and children on all one site without putting all of the resources and professionals on the one site. great if short term money saving is your goal but if genuine inclusion and education and long term social harmony and equality is your goal then obviously the prognosis is not good.

it isn't imo judgerinder - i taught humanities and it was far better to have ability sets. it meant i was able to get the lower ability groups who allegedly were set to get e's into the c/d bracket by massively focusing on and teaching to their needs and working on their confidence and ensuring they didn't shrink in corners. it also meant with the higher ability groups you could teach high and aim for really high percentages of a*'s.

JudgeRinderSays - I bet someone comes along in a moment and says either that the high ability students will achieve regardless or better still, its good for them to mix with everyone as they will grow up to live in a mixed society blah blah. You get triple points if you get offered both!

meant to say 'mixed ability groups' not 'mixed ability setting'

so in English and humanities, why is mixed ability setting better for the high attainers than setting?

English teacher here and I'd always go for sets above mixed ability. A good teacher will teach high and support the lower ability in the group (and there will always be weaker and stronger students in any class regardless of setting) but with all the will in the world, no one can teach targeted A* students and F students in the same class over an extended period of time and get the best results possible for every student in the group.

it's utterly mad and of course all of that 'background' stuff is aside from having to actually plan and teach lessons lol. it's just.... it's crazy.

It sounds absolutely mad!

Two points:

• at my DD's schools sets are "set in stone" for the year, except during the first year of secondary (there is a big intake from other schools at that point) when changes may occur six weeks in to the beginning of the year.
• children who are not MT are no more or less likely than those who are MT to be in the top sets in MT.

sorry facetious maybe but that is a bit what it looks like on the ground.

and great fun if you have a big switch over just before parents evening and have to write reports for children you don't know and can't find even five minutes to talk to the teacher who was teaching them up to last week because they too are flat out writing reports and trying to catch teachers of the students they just got at the same time as a deadline to get all your student data files up to date and handed in plus panicking that they haven't ordered their repeat prescription because they haven't had time to make a phone call and if they run out of valium this week the world just might end

you're quite right bonsoir and no they won't necessarily follow the same curriculum - if say it was ks4 maths they could be taking entirely different papers from one set to another. and individual student planning is huge - you have a folder with all the data for every single student in the class, what level they're working at, what level they should be at, what targets you've set and evidence of what you're doing to get them to that etc so having got all of that in place having them switched for another student would be fun. not to mention if they have a learning difficulty that you've planned ahead and tailored resources for all for nothing and they get swapped for someone with a different problem that you've now got to do all that for once you've got head round what the issue is and how you can plan for it.

or if say, joy of joys, they're being moved down not for ability but because they can't be bothered to work so now will be both disruptive and mocking the abilities of the kids around them and you'll have to plan more advanced work for them knowing full well they won't do it and justify why they're not achieving the level they should be and fill out the extra paperwork for their behaviour etc......

or let's say 6 kids need to move down and only 1 child needs to move up - how does that work in a full school do you think? it's a nice idea being fluid but capacity and reality are different matter.

Kenlee
Second language is an angle most of us forget - I'm glad her school are making it work so well for her.

In this area we have lots of Polish kids who have grown up multilingual and setting for them will be essential.

All I can say is that setting is great. My DD is in set two for maths but outperforms those in set 1. She is in set 5 for English and yet again outperforms some in set 1.

I was quite upset at first. I felt my daughter was being held back. Then my daughter explained that each set has their own characteristics. How the teacher teaches and how pupils respond to that type of teaching. So in Maths its more fluid in my DD's set and more rigid in set 1. Whereas in English she is in set 5 and is there as she needs more individual support. English not being her first language.
So I don't see anything wrong with setting

Thank you for spelling it out, hijk.

Bonsoir, do you mean how do teachers plan for individual students when the class list keeps changing? We just go round in circles, same as when the specification is changed after we had finishedthe scheme of work, same as when the topics are changed after we had finished writing the scheme of work, same as when the subject is changed, same as when the ofsted criteria are changed, same as when the timetables are changed, and believe me, a change every half term is pretty conservative. Last term my tutorgroups maths classes changed every single lesson. Last term my timetable changed completely ever single time a teacher fell to pieces or walked out. Don't worry about it, we are used to 3/4 of our paperwork being chucked out before it becomes relevant, anyway. and there is no material difference between writing it and throwing it in the bin, and writing it and handing it in to be filed. Neither or likely to ever see the light of day again, ofsted just wants to measure the weight of the file, that is all.

Because over the course of the years the gap between top and bottom turns into
single science at the bottom through to triple science at the top
or core maths at the bottom and higher plus further plus stats maths at the top
its about speeds of laminar flow of learning

I can hardly see the point of the sets...

bonsoir
All the sets are following the same curriculum just at different speeds.
The top of one set will have had extension work that makes them overlap with the bottom of the next set up.
The slowest in the set will benefit from the recap that will happen when they move down a set.
The scheme of work will not be affected in any way.

How do teachers plan schemes of work if the pupil composition of sets changes every half term?!

tbh I'd question the independence of a study that found that mensa kids benefit academically from sharing lessons with very weak students. Not sure how anyone can say that they still make the progress that they would have done otherwise. Maybe its not saying that though? Maybe its not saying that though. Could it be more the it-will-do school of thought?

I want my kids to do well academically at school and enjoy the experience, which ds doesn't seem to when he has to listen to repeated explanations.

There's still form time, friends, lunchtime and every day life to learn other non academic stuff.

DCs school set based on CATs at the start of Y7 in the core subjects.
The sets were jigged every half term right through year 9
each subject doing its own thing
ten or fifteen kids changing set each time - per year
such that a kid who started year 7 in set 4 was in set 1 by middle of year 8 as their potential developed late (maths)