To think that ablity tables in school can do more harm than good

[ReallyTired]

I think it must be demoralising for a child to be stuck on bottom table. They caught in a cycle of low expectations with no chance ever to try the harder work. Sometimes people assume a child on bottom table is stupid and the child can come to believe that they are stupid.

Consversely think that that some of the brighter children on the top table can become swollen headed and believe that there is no need for them to work. This happened to my son who has had a huge culture shock when he is not in any of the top sets at secondary.

Surely there must be a better way of managing differentiation, so that children are unaware of where they are in the class. I believe that Finland doesn't have top or bottom tables. It would be interesting to know how Finland manage to stretch the brightest children and support the weakest.

As they get older I'm sure they will have personal targets. So unless the new curriculum says different (please correct me if I'm wrong), these targets will tell them they have to do XYZ to achieve a level 4 or whatever.

They know what they can do and they know what the rest of the class can do. It's never really been any different.

Good thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/1918088-Views-on-ability-groups

When DS was at primary, there were only 5 boys in his class and all five were sat on the same table in years 5 and 6. The boys had widely differing abilities and all ended getting on each others nerves due to the inconsistencies with their abilities. I understand why their teacher did this, to promote friendships in amongst a large group of girls, but it did DS no favours at all. Two of the boys were working two levels (not sub levels) above one of the other boys and the other two were working one level ahead.

Kids in "naice" areas don't having learning difficulties then, moomin? That's good to know, I live in quite a nice area too but maybe if I moved to a nicer area my DS learning difficulties will disappear

We teach daily phonics across the year group in abinkty groups at my school with three teachers-one group is working on satpin, one is working on phase 4/5 and the other is introducing spelling patterns. It works well and can be pitched to the children's level.

OP, would you rather this didn't happen? Would you rather the whole class had the same input regardless of their current needs?

In a class of thirty children, I don't think there will ever be a system that fits them all perfectly.

I can see that having different ability tables might not always be the best option for those on the bottom table, but then I don't think mixed ability tables is best for the brightest dc either.

At least when you have children of a similar ability on each table the teacher or TA can support the group as a whole and whatever is said will be appropriate for all of them. If children are on mixed tables then the teacher has to repeat everything over and over, and children can't work together as easily.

There should be no need for top table children to become swollen headed if they are still given work that is challenging for them that makes them think hard.

Last term my top set in maths ds was seated next to a child who found maths difficult. Said child badgered ds into always giving him the answers and would be cruel and humiliate ds if he refused . So my ds knew it was wrong but he didn't feel like he could say no.

Ds always changes table and sets according to the subject so he says.

Didn't someone do an experiment once where teachers were deliberately given inaccurate information about the abilities of a class so that they were told the less able were in fact amongst the brightest? As as I remember, because they then had higher expectations of them and started treating them differently, stretching them and giving them more work to do, those children did in fact begin to achieve much better.

I think the lesson is that teachers sometimes get entrenched ideas about children which are reinforced by this sort of practice. I well remember a girl in my class at school who regularly came in the bottom 3 in class (I'm afraid they used to issue results publicly so we all knew). She stunned the teachers by getting very respectable GCSEs and there was some very very rapid revision of ideas.

It's probably true that teachers get entrenched ideas about children's abilities, but when they have so many children with such wide variations in ability to teach all at the same time, it's not surprising really.

People don't generally want more testing done at schools, and rightly so, but the only other way for a teacher to continually know where a child's true ability lies is to have sufficient time with each child, one to one, on a weekly basis. And that's just never going to happen.

Within the state system it has to be about making the best of the limited resources available, and I think one way of doing that is by sitting children of similar ability together.

bruthas and sunshine
I apologise if I have offended you. I am simply trying to explain that there are no children with any particular learning difficulties in my DS's class and 95% of the parents are very engaged with their children's education, the vast majority of them being professional/graduates who presumably value education.
Consequently, there is no one falling below the expected average level of achievement in my son's class of 28 or so. So the bottom group would probably equate to the middle group in most schools.
My DS is the youngest of four. We have moved about a bit and I have had kids in a couple of different primaries. I know his school/ class is not typical.

And therein lies the problem with OFSTED, sunshinemum.

The school I work in got requires improvement for its last OFSTED, because the SATs results weren't an improvement on the previous year's. Never mind the fact that the cohort came into school further behind than the year before, plus the children had greater difficulties in their final year (off the top of my head, one child's parent died, and another child was in and out of hospital for a good few months). No, all OFSTED cared about was that end results should improve year on year.

Which is where the sausage factory falls down. If you are making sausages, then the raw materials need to be consistent, and the ingredients the same.
Children are all unique, and every year the combination is different.