Secondary School that doesn't set: any experience?

In our school the English teachers are all excellent - the kids say they are all really good at teaching. Maths however is very different, they struggle to recruit good quality Maths teachers. A couple are really good, a few a ok but many are bloody awful.

What about English ? The dcs have had many lessons where teachers cater to the lowest common denominator and just show films of books/plays as "it's easier to understand" . Many lessons have been spent going over "what is a pronoun" etc for the benefit of some.

Teaching to the lowest level is a poor teaching decision, not a grouping issue.

Showing loads of films is also a poor teaching decision, not a grouping issue. (I can think of colleagues in setted systems who rely loads on film which meant all I heard was 'why are they watching a film again?! We never watch films!')

Film has it's place in teaching literature. But it depends how it is done.

Depends what you mean by going over a pronoun. E.g. my able group know what alliteration is, but they get lazy with their thinking and say things like 'it starts with thr same letter' when alliteration is about sound. So when someone says 'there's a metaphor on line 5' I will say, yes & why is that a metaphor / yes that is juxtaposition, what is juxtaposition. So we are going over things for clarity and precision.

Equally, i do lots of recap activities to help embed quotation learning because there's loads to learn.
I also recap how to use a comma (much to the eye rolls and claims of we did this in primary!) but that's because many of thrm have got into lazy habits of comma splicing so need to be reminded (& then it's linked to how authora structure sentences)

But if the going over lessons are repeating lots of basic concepts then that too is down to poor teaching choices.

Orangeplastic - yes, it sounds as though your dd is being let down. Mixed ability teaching works well with excellent teachers who are on the ball, know their children well, are good at their subject and don't go off sick. It works less well with teachers who don't teach enough to enable children to access the grades they are capable of in the first place! I would hope children who are capable would be getting practice at questions that are a bit harder than those expected in the exams, not easier, so they do not get derailed by nasty surprises.

This discussion has focused almost entirely on Maths.

How does non-setting work for French and other MFL? How do you teach tenses etc when a proportion of the class are just not getting it at all and the teacher continually has to explain basic English grammatical concepts and after three years some pupils still insist on saying, "Je suis quatorze ."

What about English ? The dcs have had many lessons where teachers cater to the lowest common denominator and just show films of books/plays as "it's easier to understand" . Many lessons have been spent going over "what is a pronoun" etc for the benefit of some. Dd got a pasting last parents' evening because the teacher said "she isn't sharing her knowledge" (actually she's shy and never speaks up in class) and in mixed ability the clever ones pull up the less able. Dd heaved a sigh of relief when they started setting and she's no longer in trouble for somehow not playing ball.

roundaboutthetown I think the problem for dd is that the teacher sets questions at GCSE level 4-6, dd feels that she is doing really well, feels she knows every thing, can answer all the questions in her book easily then she sits a test that includes quite a few GCSE level 7-9 and comes home really annoyed that she has been given really hard questions in a test that she hasn't been taught how to answer in class - it's crushing her confidence in her teacher, as she feels the teacher is not preparing them properly for their test. She feels let down.

Sorry, didn't finish my point - but it's something that as a school we try our utmost to do because we genuinely believe that teaching the same 'topic' - short multiplication, or translation, or percentages - to the whole class and then providing support for the less able and challenge for the most is the best way to do it.

It's not really necessary to move on to more challenging topics, you can find more challenging problems on the same topic, their building their problem solving skills which are arguably more important for the most able than just learning methods.

Exactly. Within the same overall topic of each lesson, that's what our most able children experience every day. It IS hard to find a suitable challenge for every singe topic, every day o the week - or rather for most days, because obviously there are days when we are teaching a new concept to all and so there may be a lesson or two while even the most able do 'the basics' to ensure that they then problem solve from a firm foundation.

Orangeplastic - yes, I think that is an issue. Primary teachers are not maths specialists, generally, so they can't come up with an endless supply of more challenging problems. Ds1 was teaching things to himself, or just listening to his older brother and picking up on the maths he was doing. I can fully understand he would be difficult to cater for. He enjoyed helping others, though, and had some quite close friendships with children at the opposite end of the "speed of grasping" spectrum!...

Yes, he probably has. And it's very difficult to challenge someone with that level of natural ability. My school used to have a gifted and talented program that would have provided that challenge for someone like him, but it's been stopped due to funding :( so it's left to normal classroom teachers to try to stretch the most able without going too far above what the others are doing as that can store up problems for later years.

Caretakertonuns :

"I'm a firm believer in equality of outcome - setting by ability goes directly against this."

What utter tosh!

I think we all believe in equality of opportunity , but do you honestly believe that everyone, no matter what their genes, their aptitude, their effort - can achieve the same outcome? In every subject?

How on earth are you going to make sure that every child achieves exactly the same at the end of their school career? In Maths, English, French, PE? Just how, may I ask?

It's not really necessary to move on to more challenging topics, you can find more challenging problems on the same topic, their building their problem solving skills which are arguably more important for the most able than just learning methods I agree but in our case the more challenging problems are not being given to the more able students in the class.

He's excellent at problem solving - looks up puzzles and problems for fun on the internet. He's also used sites suggested on here by noblegiraffe. There comes a point when people are scrabbling around looking for something to challenge him and he's done it all before.

There are an awful lot of puzzles and problems using only primary maths that can be very challenging for the most able. It's not really necessary to move on to more challenging topics, you can find more challenging problems on the same topic, their building their problem solving skills which are arguably more important for the most able than just learning methods.

I do not assume there is a narrow ability spread in sets - if you look at what I have written on this thread, you will see I have already pointed out that the "top 10%" is a huge range of ability. However, ds2 would have been more engaged if he had been allowed to move on to different concepts in primary, rather than do the same thing as everyone else "in more depth." Now they have taken away the old level 6 maths, which he also found easy, the primary curriculum is actually now easier than it was in maths for the most able, imo - it is only harder for everyone else!

First time they have done this but DD's school they have creamed off the top set in Maths and the rest are mixed. DD (year 10) who is a hard working quiet kid, capable of getting a grade 7 with hard work, is not being challenged - she tells me, her and 3 others are frequently finished their work before the rest of the class, she finds the work very easy and is bored in class. They give the whole year the same maths test to sit every 2-3 weeks and despite dd knowing all her classwork she cannot do quite a lot of the paper as they have not been practicing the harder questions, she doesn't want me to speak to the teacher, says she'll do it herself but will most likely just comfortably sit at the top of a very non challenging class.
I'm trying to allow time for the teacher to get her head around this new approach but if it hasn't been sorted soon I will have to raise it.

he got the max standardised score in all his SATS last year and was not remotely challenged either by the old curriculum or the new one. He was picking up what the teachers said first time and wondering why they kept having to go over the same thing again and again, year after year

That's an experience the super able have when taught in sets , too.

It really is rather naïve to assume there isn't a fairly wide ability spread even in a set.

I know noble, I'm not confident of it happening either, but I do think we can get closer to it than we are currently.

I had the privilege a couple of years ago of speaking to some maths teachers from Shanghai about their mastery curriculum. It was very, very interesting. They have subject specialists from the age of 6, teach whole class lessons to children sitting in rows at desks, and every child is expected to keep up right from the start. When I asked about the children who can't keep up I was told that their parents have to come in and help them keep up. There's no such thing as teaching assistants over there, but primary classrooms generally have 4/5 parents sitting with their own child making sure they keep up with the work. They proudly talked about how they all teach every lesson to mixed ability classes, but then later in the conversation it came about that kids have a test at the end of primary school which decided which school they go to (so they are already selected by ability!!).

I also found it very interesting that teachers over there are only given 2 classes, which they then see every day for the 5 years of high school. So they are in school the same number of hours as we are, but each teacher only teaches 2 lessons, so they've got a lot more time to make sure the lessons they teach are amazing (but the lesson I saw her teach was nothing special really)

Ps noble - I'm not a teacher, so the fast and slow grasper concept I used when describing the mastery approach now being used at my dss' old primary is just the way the teachers explained it to the parents! No doubt they felt obliged to use Ofsted-speak!!

The problem with all children "reaching the same level" by the end of primary is that ds2 did find primary school frustrating - he got the max standardised score in all his SATS last year and was not remotely challenged either by the old curriculum or the new one. He was picking up what the teachers said first time and wondering why they kept having to go over the same thing again and again, year after year. Fortunately, it is not a school which fills the final year with SATs practice (although consequently, its SATs results are not great, so that will probably change, to the detriment of the brighter children who do not need all the practice), so he quite enjoyed year 6, because he liked the teacher and was not confined to an English and maths heavy curriculum.

I think the fact he has been set for English and Maths since years 5 and 6 is why DS is finding it hard to be without them now in Year 9. I guess reading through the thread the change to one top set in Year 9 then mixed abilities for the other groups fits the bit about how mixed ability is better for children apart from the high achievers.

I just hope they don't leave it until February before putting it in place as he is definitely switching off and if I had known this was to be the case it would probably have affected our choice of school. Totally accept that there is always a settling in period when they switch schools and he has it now rather than in Year 7 but the difference is with the changes to the GCSE syllabus they start it earlier . I'm starting to regret not trying harder for the Grammar 3 years ago and I never ever thought I'd say that. Hopefully all will be good but I'm apprehensive.

Can't remember who it was who said about their MIL suggesting a tutor but they felt why should they need to - totally hear what you are saying but in my experience if you can do it, do it. We tried with DD but she wouldn't accept the tutors. She's now in the situation where the local college won't let her do a level 3 course as she doesn't have a C in Maths, despite the fact she already has a Distinction Merit in a level 3 90 credit diploma.

I can't see the benefit of 1 teacher trying to divide her time in the lesson between multiple ability levels.It makes no sense and what about further maths GCSE?

I found it interesting that my dd who has always done very well at school (early September born, mature and very orientated to pleasing her teachers) got very fed up with slow classroom pacing when she was in a class where the teacher wanted to make sure everyone learned in a very structured way in a subject (English) dd naturally excels at. My ds who had a very bumpy ride until he was 15/16 really enjoyed feeling that he was excelling and able to help others so much that he volunteered to be a peer tutor. I suspect that the difference was the quality of teaching, but different children respond differently to being in classes where some of their peers really struggle.

I also think it's unwise to assume that it's always less academic children that behave badly. The worst behaviour I've ever experienced at school was when I went to a public school for sixth form. Very clever and incredibly privileged children can be nightmares too.

where all pupils stand a chance of understanding the whole secondary curriculum

Call me a person with a fixed mindset, but I don't believe that will ever happen. I believe that just like Michael Phelps has physical advantages that make him particularly suited to swimming, other people have mental advantages which mean that they will be better at picking up mathematical concepts. Practice will make you better at those things, absolutely, but given that the mentally suited person is still learning while you learn, they will always be ahead of you.

My bottom sets would definitely argue the point that ALL their teachers care a great deal about them. We do care and they know it. I absolutely love teaching the lower sets, they are smaller groups so I can actually tailor my lessons more closely to what they struggle with on a personal level. And I have more time to spend with each pupil to address their misconceptions.

Caretaker but doesn't that have the opposite result? Any school that advertised that ethos (or practiced it) would soon find that every motivated parent of dc above that minimum level would do their upmost to avoid it. So all you do is sacrifice the above average poorer dc who don't have other options. Essentially putting the full burden of the lower achievers on a small group of disadvantaged higher achievers whilst the more advantaged higher achievers get a good education elsewhere. As happens round here.

I do agree that bottom sets shouldn't be dumping grounds, but like anything in education they don't in theory need to be, and certainly not all schools use them that way.