Any teachers here? Do mixed ability classes work?

Have you looked at the Progress8 and Attainment8 values for the high achievers (on the Dept of Education website). This will tell you whether the high achieving kids make good progress compared with similar at other schools.

Note that on the taster days the last thing they would have wanted would be to do anything 'hard'.

My son came home from transition day saying he thought the lessons were going to be too easy for him.
The point of induction day is to get y6s familiar with the school and meet other students, get used to a bigger environment.

To come away from a couple of short sesisons deciding lessons at the school will be too easy raises questions of arrogance in my opinion.

Of course no school can ever guarantee that it will only ever have excellent, experienced teachers (especially in the current climate and with the cuts), so presumably that would indicate that schools should all use setting then?
That doesn't work as a proposal either.
You need people with excellent subject knowledge to stretch more able students, but then you also need strong teachers in lower sets.
Some schools put weaker teachers in lower sets and that becomes crowd control.
If you put your stronger teachers in lower sets to close the gap then someone will complain that the teacher of top set isn't stretching their DC.

Then add in that typically GCSE and A level get priority staffing so in many schools KS3 gets shifted around the KS4/5 timetable and suddenly staffing classes becomes more tricky.

If you've got a department like mine where everyone is strong then you can start allocating classes to people's strengths (eg. Bill is fab at middle KS3, Lorna is goot with the students who need extra support, Dan had a top last year so he can have set 3 this year, we're mixed for these years so look at the class lists and try to match staff to the mix of students). Departments like ours are a minority because even good schools have trouble recruiting consistently strong teachers at the moment.

I think it depends. Having worked with low ability they were very keen on setting as (in their words) they didn't feel stupid when other people were whizzing through the work and they were struggling.

At my dc's school they set for Maths in year 7, Languages half way through year 7 (because they do 2 languages for the top set) and in year 8 do a basic setting (1 top, 2 small bottom and rest mixed) for English, and in year 9 they set for Science, in 2 groups-triple science and double science. The top will all do triple, the bottom do double, but in the middle they can choose/discuss which is more suitable for them, so they can end up in the top end sets of the double science or the bottom end of the triple.

I think the learning languages for 2 years at primary doesn't really make any difference. My dc do not have an aptitude for languages and did a different language at primary to the one they do at secondary (don't ask!!) but have ended up in the top group.

So it depends on the quality of teaching in that school and classroom.

Of course no school can ever guarantee that it will only ever have excellent, experienced teachers (especially in the current climate and with the cuts), so presumably that would indicate that schools should all use setting then?

As a parent of 2 academic strugglers, I find my DDs have got on better in setted classes than in mixed ability. Their confidence improved by not having the clever kids calling out answers before they had read the problems (maths), and by feeling they could contribute their own ideas (English, Humanities). Smaller class sizes in lower sets also helps.

That said, one of the best performing schools locally apparently has mixed ability for everything bar maths.

It depends on how big the mix is in my opinion.

I tend to find parents of more able children (especially those who think their children are brightsr than they are) seem to love setting. The problem is everyone wants to be in set 1 even though the target grades are the same as set 2 because some are fixated with the number on their timetable in an unhealthy way. Equally, you spend half your year dealing with demands to move up. Nobody seems to realise that for someone to move up, someone else has to move down (and then you get the whining because someone has moved down). People who like setting tend to like it because they think their child will be on the right side of things. Nobody seems to favour setting when their hard-working lower ability child risks being in a class full of badly behaved and disruptive students who are in there due to behaviour.

In terms of mixed, if you've got a broadly middle to able cohort then a mix of, say, grade 6-9 students is a nice mixed class to have. Even with 1 or 2 lower-mid ability students on 4s mixed worked well.

What I don't think works is having a fully mixed class of grade 2-9.

Every school I have worked in that is in 'mixed' ability classes tends to have a higher than average intake & then is careful where it puts its outliers at both ends (e.g. don't put the brightest 2 children in the year in a mixed class with the 4 children who are on literacy catch up) because a massive spread gets more and more difficult as the curriculum gets more challenging.

Science can wait until year 9 type age.

What do you base this on? Why is it different than maths and English?

I'm a teacher btw and conducted my research rather than just read around the topic.

I've just done some research on this. They work well with strong teachers who are able to differentiate effectively and manage behaviour well. Middle and low ability students will benefit in this context. High ability don't benefit but neither is it to their detriment.

With more inexperienced teachers who haven't developed these skills enough mixed ability classes are detrimental to all students' progress.

So it depends on the quality of teaching in that school and classroom.

I am a Maths teacher, I would never work in a school that didn’t set for Maths from Year 5 upwards. That tells you my views on setting in Maths!

Other subjects I can see that there is less of an issue, but I think that by secondary age English and languages should also be settled, but humanities don’t need to be. Science can wait until year 9 type age.

I'm glad my dc were mainly in sets tbh. I worked in a secondary school where they were only set for maths.

His state school has mixed ability classes for all subjects apart from maths and English

Common for Y7 - some schools only set for Maths initially. Some teach mixed ability English all way through to GCSE.

Do they set for other subjects later on - Languages and Science are common areas that are set in later years.

With Humanities and Arts many schools have few GCSE classes so therefore can not set because of numbers and by default mixed ability teaching.

Many private schools can only broadly set due to numbers. Local private school top and bottom set for Maths - there is a massive spread of ability. Maybe high flyer better in large state school with top set Maths out of 7 sets (14 classes split into 2 halves).

What did the MFL / Science / Humanities teachers at the allocated state school tell you about how the mixed ability teaching works there? Presumably you asked about setting etc at the open evening, if it is such an important issue to you. Or did they tell you that it works fine but now you are having doubts?

Teaching mixed attainment requires better teaching. If the school is in the process of moving from one model to another, it's likely that they will be running lots of training and focusing on improving pedagogy. That's a good thing.

Teaching mixed attainment requires different teaching, and it certainly places a higher workload burden on teachers (this is not a good thing), but I don’t think that necessarily means better teaching.
I know a school that has moved to mixed ability, it was at the drop of a hat, teachers had no training or support and were just expected to re-write SOW and get on with it. So don’t assume that what has been said above would be the case.

I am governor at a school with mixed ability classes. We use a lot of TAs to assist with the differentiation.

The Education Endowment Foundation toolkit which a lot of educators look to for the evidence about mixed ability teaching has fudged the results to make it look like setting only has a negative effect.

Actually the evidence shows setting has a negative effect for the least able, and a positive effect for the most able.

The evidence should also be taken with extreme caution as most of it is based on international studies from different school systems where they say a class is ‘mixed ability’ but because they hold children back a year if they don’t meet standards and promote them if they are very bright, or they use a mastery system, then their classes are nowhere near as mixed in ability as they are in England.

In every mixed ability class I was ever in, I was bullied for being clever. I disagree with them massively, and I don't think the wellbeing of the high achieving few should be sacrificed to The God Of Everyone's The Same. I don't think my son, who needs a LOT of extra help in English, would enjoy receiving that extra help in front of students who may be 6 or 7 levels higher than him in ability.

maybe in an education system where grading and measurable achievement aren't so highly focused, but that's not our education system is it? We now teach our children from a young age to grade themselves, be graded by others and to pin their fragile self worth on a 9 at GCSE

good point... lots of schools I've visited the top sets are largest class sizes & lower sets smaller. This has been fine for my kids in high sets, btw.

We have about 25 as class size when mixed abilities but when set the top sets are bigger and 32 plus. Another advantage of mixed ability.

It can work... but equally ive had amazing set classes. I think for the absolute brightest the set works Better

In my experience as the student it depends how well they are run. My English classes weren’t set, I spent one teachers lessons paired with a girl who was keen but not that great at getting stuff on paper, we were really good for each other. For the other I spent it paired with a boy who spent most of his time trying to stop me working including one memorable lesson that I spent having a basketball bounced off my head. I didn’t do quite as well in that subject as those that were set but that might just be related to my own abilities.

32 is a big class, I thought avg. secondary school class size was about 26 still.

I much prefer them. Better for almost everyone in my opinion, and backed up by most research I believe.