Would you ask that your child is moved to a lower set?

[Berrydeliciousness]

Year 7 son said he is struggling in maths. They did a test a while ago and he was placed in top set. He said he hasn’t a clue what is going on and the other children seem to follow well. He’s feeling a bit miserable about it.

I think there is another test coming up so he might be moved anyway.

Yes, sounds a sensible idea. Unless he’s literally only just been moved and hasn’t had chance to catch up with a particular topic they’d already started? Best speak to the teacher.

No. I'd ask how I could support him in the current set and then do it. It's better with maths to be in as high a set as possible because the gains from that knowledge/understanding accumulate more than in any other subject. If he can't manage after he gets support to transition to the higher tier then that's the time to drop down.

I am happy to support him but I don’t want him to be working at a level that is a constant struggle.
I will ask to talk to his teacher.

He's only in year 7 and struggling, so yes, I'd ask to move him down. It will help build his confidence as well as a strong foundation. I am a math teacher of almost 10 years btw🤓

He is embarrassed at the idea of being moved down but it sounds miserable to sit in class unable to follow what’s going on.
He thinks the other children have covered more at primary school. Is it possible to have good sats scores and not have covered the curriculum well?

Yes, it's possible to be able to do the calculations but not have an in-depth understanding (but pupils that don't get that understanding forget calculations much more quickly, compounding the situation, so I think it's unlikely your son is as weak as he thinks).

The higher tiers are going to be pushed harder to that deep understanding and the lower sets will be shown how to do the calculations more explicitly with less time to explore concepts. It's unusual these days to set kids in year seven and not best practice really as they all need to be exposed to the opportunity to go as far as they can in a new school.

Have a talk to the teacher but if he were mine I'd fully explore supporting him for a while before anything else. Only you know how truly miserable he is though and obviously well-being is crucial.

I think talking to the teacher first to get their take is important. I was top set too and I remember asking my mum to move down as I found it hard while the other children in my set seemed to find it easy ( quite a few went on to do maths and Stem degrees). My mum went in all ready to ask if I could move but the teacher refused. She said I could do the work; I just needed to work at it. I ended up with an A at GCSE but stopped after that.

in retrospect the teacher was right, I could do the work. I was just struggling because I did have to work harder than the other children and to be honest I wasn’t used to it. I found it a little blow to my pride to have to work really hard at something and still not be as good as the others.

The teacher will have a perspective in whether your child is genuinely falling behind and isn’t capable, or whether he is just comparatively not as strong as the other children but still able to meet the standard expected.

This information is all helpful thank you. I missed he was finding it hard so it’s good I’m aware now.

DDs school have multiple tests a year where they shake up the sets and in year 7 the moves were quite dramatic: I know kids who moved from set 8 to set 4, set 2 to set 5. In year 7 my DD moved 1 down then 4 up in English once it all finally clicked for her (we were abroad years 4-6 so she was out of the loop massively) so this might not be the last time your son is in his current set. I suspect the setting was done on a combination of SATs and CATs? If that’s the case then CATs is more of an aptitude test.

Absolutely. No point being in a set going too fast.

I was put into top set for maths in secondary school. I couldn’t keep up and dreaded maths lessons because of it. It really knocked my confidence. I was so much happier when I got moved down because I could actually do the work!

Yes my eldest was moved from 1 to 2 to 1 and asked to go back to 2. She much preferred the pace and extra explanation in set 2, it did more for her confidence feeling top of the 2nd set than bottom of the top set. They do so many test the school will probably move him anyway.

I wouldn't. Conformation bias means it's hard to ever get back up. I would look at the year 7 curriculum and do work over the Xmas hols with him to get him confident on what had been covered so far. And then I'd do weekly check ins in the new term.

This. I’d get a CgP book and work through it with him by asking his teachers what topics they are doing

I'd start a conversation, and see what the teacher thinks. Let them know you think he's struggling, but not tell them to move him and see what they think needs to happen

You could ask to move him down but if you're in a position to, I'd look at getting some 1:1 tuition for him to find out what the specific difficulties are and fix them so he can move forward with confidence. I ended up having a couple of terms of maths coaching (as it was called back in the 1970's) which was so helpful to me. I'd not properly grasped a few earlier concepts and so was struggling with all of it as had insecure foundations. That 1:1 (and the homework she set) made such a difference.

In think it’s sensible to have a chat with the teacher and be ready to provide additional support but this happened to me in year 9 and I think that being moved into the top set really hindered my abilities to be honest.

I was moved up because I’d got a B in a mock exam, from day one I found the top set a struggle, I didn’t understand anything, couldn’t keep up, really struggled with the homework. We spent so much time working on more complex things where I would’ve been better actually strengthening my knowledge on the more basic stuff. My parents did what they could, I had a maths tutor and lots of support at home but it really didn’t get any better for me.

I ended up just scraping a C and I really believe I could have done much better had I been kept in the middle set that I was in previously. The exact same thing happened to me in science also.

The main issue with top set is they expect your processing time to be a lot faster than average. So you may have the ability to do high level maths but at a slower speed. Both my DDs took higher papers and got good grades but needed set 2 pace to process the content at a slower pace.