To think ability setting in primary school is a crap idea?

[mrsshears]

I don't mean different work as obviously that is essential to cater to different abilities I mean all of this 'Top table' rubbish, I think it creates problems and becomes a self fulfiling prophecy for all involved, there must be a better system,AIBU?

Bonsoir, it's not "making excuses", it's taking a realistic approach to the cultural differences that exist between countries and making realistic steps to close the gap.

Not just saying "Oh well we should become a carbon copy of X country and do whatever they do."

Because that's never going to work.

Really Tired - Singapore is looking to be more like us - less testing, more creativity in the curriculum - as we look to become more like them. I think until we come to value education as much as Confucian societies etc we are unlikely to improve our global education standing any time soon. Coming increasingly difficult economic times & increasing competition may cause us to do this more than any new initiative.

The opportunities to move between sets should be many, MrsShears.

If education is so great in Singapore or Finland, do their leavers dominate admissions to the world's top Universities? Okay maybe not Finland (numbers, wealth), but what about Singapore, are they vastly over represented in admissions to top world Unis?

Singapore has, as you say LLjjk, a comparatively small population. It's worth noting that NUS is ranked about no 23 globally & MBA programme ranked about 3rd in world I believe.

Our global education standings are not culturally fixed. On another thread recently someone wrote very pithily about how literacy in Britain leapt within a hundred years or so from being an elite achievement to a majority norm.

If you downgrade standards in education the children will not achieve. If you expect less of them then less will be achieved. If their parents believe they can achieve a better standard of living through not being educated this will be passed on to the children.

All these things happened under Labour - it's not a cultural phenomenon, it was a social phenomenon. It resulted in social stasis for those people Labour were meant to help.

Thank goodness for Gove's efforts to return to rigour despite the fact that it abrades so badly with parts of the teaching sector.

"Thank goodness for Gove's efforts to return to rigour despite the fact that it abrades so badly with parts of the teaching sector."

I think we need a sea-change in recruitment to the teaching profession. We won't get ambitious, inventive, enthusiastic teachers across the board (because there are of course plenty of those already, just not all of them) unless the career opportunities are there for them.

One of the problems I've found with mixed ability groups, say in literacy or in maths is when you are explaining or discussing what you want them to be achieving in their work.
So you pitch it to the more able children, at a high level, using vocabulary they are confident and comfortable with and setting the parameters. They enthuse, start asking and throwing around ideas and are off like greyhounds.
The less able then either panic because the challenge is too great, get so muddled that they produce a complete hash of what was intended or copy from their friends and ask for lots of help.
Pitch it to the less able, or the middle and the more able may rise to the challenge and produce excellence or they may stick with the average level of what the rest of the group is doing. Which is OK on paper but is underachieving for them.
I like ability groups for some things because you can pitch the level and the support and the LO to a specific target group. The general materials and resources are around for all to access, so if x wants to use level 5 punctuation and extended complex sentences with adjectival clauses in his writing, there is nothing to stop him choosing to do so. Even if his usual writing is a 2b.

I don't like setting on attainment because mg ds would fall through the cracks. He is dyslexic and his results are spiky ie his comprehension is way ahead.of his writing ability.
Some of his result would put him in middle sets but thankfully school recognise his ability and put him on top sets where his brain is stretched.
I worked for a major Finnish company and not overly impressed by the results of their.system. It produced extremely efficient robots.

It isn't just the pay though, the drop-out rates within the first year, and the first 5 years are enormous.
So retention is poor because of other issues: working conditions, changing expectations, relationships with staff, SLT children and parents, constant government initiatives and changing priorities and a host of other factors.

WofflingOn is right - 50% leave within 5 years, citing workload as the main issue.

Feenie, you and I are beginning to make me feel like the RL versions of...

www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=14njUwJUg1I&feature=endscreen

OP am I right in thinking your DD is only y2? Are you sure that she became lazy rather than the other pupils who moved to the top table just overtook her? I'm assuming you are using the high IQ score she received last year as a base for her being academic? As someone else upthread said IQ tests at such a young age aren't really worth much and don't test academic skill

I think it happens quite regularly where children are overtaken by late bloomers tbh. My dd wasn't at all academic in ks1 sitting somewhere below average. In yr3 things started to click in a most spectacular way. I went to her first parents' evening and was told "of course she gets all her spellings right every week" this was the girl who was spelling "she" wrong regularly in yr2. By yr6 she was the most able in her year and got her level 5's without hesitation and in yr9 she got 8,7,7. Inconceivable really that she left yr 2 with 1a's.

@ Wofflingon

DH was asked to help with the rewrite of the Science curriculum for a Middle Eastern State - to make it more "Western"
First thing we got sent was the current curriculum

The criteria said that children must learn only by looking, must stay in their seats at all times, that Girls will be taught separately from Boys and nothing in the Biology curriculum may conflict with the Koran.

Oh, and the teachers would be reading from a script as they were only qualified to high school level.

We walked away from the project.
But somebody else has swallowed their morals and taken on that work.

Rote learning is common all over the world outside Europe and North America.
Its fine for basic concepts and facts, not great for analytical skills

Setting and differentiation are important to allow as many people as possible to develop analytical and abstract thought patterns.