Teaching shouldn't be in tutor groups?

[fleurdeliz]

Secondary School - going back start of September. All teaching done in tutor groups up to year10, no sets at all.

Wouldn't it be better to swap tutor groups around so that they reflect general ability?

I'm aware that those who are great at English might not be good at Science but in general there's a fairly standard aptitude (I'm a teacher but not secondary).

Won't it be hard on the kids and teachers to be teaching such a massive range of abilities?

Additionally most children seem to hang out with those from their sets rather than tutor groups. Which means that outside of school all the groups will be mixing anyway.

I get why it's a good plan to get teachers to move rather than kids but I don't get the mixed ability tutor group thing.

Anyone think this is a good thing?

I don't think it is a good thing for subjects like Maths.

How are they going to deal with the fact that some kids do higher tier and others foundation?

I wonder how easy this would be in something like Maths.

It’d be shit. Especially if it were dropped on the maths department with no notice. It would require lots of training and masses of new resources to teach in an entirely different way.

My understanding is that teaching in mixed ability groups is better for the majority of children. The exception is the very able, who do better grouped with other able children.

The other change for teachers is that they are going to have to teach from the front and not circulate so much round the class.

@Shizzlestix

Yabu. Show me one child who is good at everything across the board and I’ll be amazed. I’d venture that most kids who are good at Maths are usually also good at Science, but not necessarily English or Languages.

I was in the top set for everything, as were enough of my peers to have allowed a 'setted' bubble if required.

We're teaching KS3 in tutor groups, the tutor groups are loosely 'set' by ability though, so the pupils that need extra help are in a smaller group and can have more Ta/Teacher focus.

KS3 is only 7 and 8 for us though. The start their GCSEs/options in Year 9

@Shizzlestix

Yabu. Show me one child who is good at everything across the board and I’ll be amazed. I’d venture that most kids who are good at Maths are usually also good at Science, but not necessarily English or Languages.

My A grades at O Level would disagree. Science, Maths, English Lang, English Lit & Humanities. Plenty of children are good at 'everything' at 16.

My schools (in the 80s) was mixed all the way through until the last half year of o'level/CSEs when they had to split by exam type in order to cover the different syllabuses. Some of it was great and some of it wasn't.

MFL were atrocious, but they were a really poor department anyway.

Maths was really good. But they had spent years building up the materials and teaching practices to do it well. We worked on modules that covered the curriculum. A different modeule each week. Normally about a half lesson of teacher lead time then working on our own or in groups on workbooks. I excelled at maths and their approach let me get through the basics quickly and move on to more advanced work and supporting other students. It wasn't until we split into O'level/CSE that I felt held back as that was done almost entirely as whole class teaching with room to move on to extension work.

English worked well. Humanities was hit and miss depending on the teacher. Sciences were generally good with one glaring exception. PE and music were poor. Teachers were basically just focused on those who were talented (which worked for me in PE but not music). We also had learning support for kids who really struggled where they had small group and 1:1 support either in class or pulled out for some lessons.

Overall it was a good experience, apart from music and French I learnt really well and it set me up nicely for working with others. But it was clear teacher commitment and training was critical so I would be worried about a school that suddenly changed to it.

For schools that use lower ability groups as dumping grounds for kids with poor behaviour it will come as a shock to higher ability kids and their parents but that's because they've been letting lower ability kids soak up all the agro until now, which is hardly reasonable. Behaviour needs to be good at all ability levels for all the kids' sake.

Err... "whole class teaching with no room to move on to extension work."

I was taught in a tutor group in year 7 and hated it. The class was so disrupted by the kids who didn’t care that I couldn’t learn anything and my friends and I who actually wanted to work were the outnumbered outcasts. On the rare occasions the class was taught (usually because the naughty kids were skiving) the pace was unbearably slow and/or covered things I’d already done at junior school.

It was such a relief to be put into sets. I was in the top set for everything and could finally LEARN. It was pretty much the same students in every top set class so we could have easily bubbled together.

Yabu. Show me one child who is good at everything across the board and I’ll be amazed. I’d venture that most kids who are good at Maths are usually also good at Science, but not necessarily English or Languages.

I know plenty of children who are top academically across the board (Maths, English, Science, Humanities, Languages). My daughters’ (albeit academically selective) school was swimming with them.

Yabu. Show me one child who is good at everything across the board and I’ll be amazed. I’d venture that most kids who are good at Maths are usually also good at Science, but not necessarily English or Languages.

Hundreds of children get straight A*s or 9s at GCSE every year, so clearly lots are good at everything across the board.

I’d have hated that. I much preferred my classes where I was in sets and could work to my ability rather than being disrupted by kids chucking stuff, swearing etc. One of my gcse classes was mixed. I got an A* and the girl sat next to me a G. You could say I did fine but I wasn’t as well prepared for A-level and the jump was massive. The teacher was able to differentiate but I really don’t think it’s a good model for the bright children.

Ds1's school operates traditional setting, ds2's uses a mixed approach - they create two parallel streams for each year 7 cohort coming in using the key language studied. Within each stream they create one top class which is the most academically able, then mix the remaining children across classes. The top class in each stream stays that way throughout the school. It's almost never happened that anyone mixed from a mixed class to the top class or vice versa. So it Serbs like they actually meet the best of both worlds according to othet posters - the most able are taught together and benefit, the rest are taught mixed and benefit.

Less able kids messed around disrupting the class,

Well that’s a major sweeping statement, which as a teacher of 10 years in the same school where we don’t set, I can you is totally wrong.

Speaking as a parent of a daughter whose school had a top set that consisted of 40% of the year group and were treated far more favourably than the remaining 60% I would prefer this. Dd was in the 'mixed set' where all the badly behaved kids were dumped and expectations were notably lower compared to the overall message being sent to the 'Top set'. There was a real snobbery amongst the parents and kids about this two tier system. Totally unfair to DD who works as hard as anyone in the top set, and yet the overall message was she isn't as good as them and it doesnt matter if her class descends into chaos because they're not the top set.

And no not all children in the mixed sets mess around . It is just the dumping ground for those that do and nobody seemingly cares. I can see the point of setting for maths but not much else to be honest. How hard can it to be to differentiate the same history class for example.

My experience of mixed ability class is not good either... it can work for some and can be good for the middle group and the engaged weaker students.... actually it can be really good for that second group and I have seen their grades go up massively....
However, it can be really awful for the more able students, and they can be the ones who become disruptive through sheer boredom, along with the other less engaged students.
For the more able students, inevitably, they can still be top of the class without working and often severely underachieve, but still have 'good' marks so the statistics aren't disrupted too much.

@Sorka

I was taught in a tutor group in year 7 and hated it. The class was so disrupted by the kids who didn’t care that I couldn’t learn anything and my friends and I who actually wanted to work were the outnumbered outcasts. On the rare occasions the class was taught (usually because the naughty kids were skiving) the pace was unbearably slow and/or covered things I’d already done at junior school.

It was such a relief to be put into sets. I was in the top set for everything and could finally LEARN. It was pretty much the same students in every top set class so we could have easily bubbled together.

I echo this. We weren't put into sets until the second year at secondary school (1980s) - the difference was amazing. Shocked that schools aren't using them any more.

DS1's school moved to mixed ability groups (other than maths) when he was in Year 8. I actually had a phone call from the Head of Year to say that it was gamble with DS, as he was high ability and there was some concern that it might affect the the top set.

Turned out very well. He has just received his gcse results and got 7x9s, 1x8 and 1x7. Three other pupils got similar /better results.

Hia friendship group widened hugely, and he has a fantastic mix of friends from across all of the original sets.

Many of his best friends were struggling in the lower sets in Year 7, with low level predicted grades. They have all been encouraged by each other to work, helped out with homework etc, and they are all now staying onto 6th form.

I was nervous at first, particularly after the phone call, but it honestly couldn't have worked out better.

@Shizzlestix

Yabu. Show me one child who is good at everything across the board and I’ll be amazed. I’d venture that most kids who are good at Maths are usually also good at Science, but not necessarily English or Languages.

I disagree. The most able students tend to be in "top sets" for everything. Very unusual to have someone with an A* in maths and a D in English, for example. You will get broadly the same kids in top sets for all subject, ditto with bottom sets. The middle can be a bit more of a mix.

Mixed ability classes are not awful. In many schools they are mixed ability, at least for KS3. When they announced schools going back my first thought was that they could be in tutor group bubbles and the teachers come to them, rather than moving 1000 kids around the school six times a day

My daughter excels in art, english, history and sciences (top sets, though art is not set). Her worst subject by far is math (third set). Whereas in some subjects sets are less important, I think in some cases, like math, teaching a mixed group would mean it can only go at the level of the least able students - otherwise they would really struggle to understand. My daughter did move up.a set in math, but really struggled and moved back down. This hasn't stopped her in physics, but she does have to work hard at it.
Her (private) school is keeping the sets as they are, bubbles are year groups now.

It’d be shit. Especially if it were dropped on the maths department with no notice. It would require lots of training and masses of new resources to teach in an entirely different way.

Literally what has happened to us. Oh and they're now 2 hour lessons not one hour.

@Girlmama

In Singapore there is no setting at all and mixed ability learning is advocated 100% of the time. They are the absolute world leaders in maths education (and I'm sure other subject areas too). Many primary schools took their approach 3 or 4 years ago and as a primary teacher who piloted the approach I can say it was incredible how it changed my way of understanding children's learning. I cannot speak for how this will work with teens/pre-teens who haven't experienced it before but it COULD be incredible.

But I bet classroom behavior is better in Singapore. I am greatly against it. I've seen it work for excellent teachers but my experience is that it fails everyone. If you have a maths class where some children are still struggling with number bonds, times tables, multiplication and you class them with children who already working several years ahead you fail them all.

OP, how are they managing options?

There are plenty of bright children that muck about and disrupt others' learning. Some then don't do as well in their exams so get moved down sets giving the impression that they arn't as bright as they are. This disproportionately affects the lower ability sets with more difficult kids in them.
Poor behaviour is an issue across ability groups.

My son (year 7) will be taught in his tutor group, I'll be interested to see how he gets on this year compared to other years.