To think this is elitist?

[FawnFrenchieMum]

State secondary school, year 7&8 currently has sets 1-5 for all classes (DD isn’t with her form group for any lessons and every class is different children).
Letter just before half term advised from next week when they return all the classes will be moved around and they will have a new timetable. Going forward, set 1 will be based on ability and be the highest achieving standard. Then classes 2-5 will now be mixed ability, there will be no ability setting within these groups.
Now I know there are lots of arguments for or against ability setting, but surely it’s one or the other. Why should the set 1 children get taught with like minded children but a child who just missed out on set 1 not, or a child who is really struggling academically now has to listen to a child who just missed out on set 1 know all the answers every week.
It feels totally elitist to me, but interested in hearing other peoples opinions.

Presumably this is a fluid situation?

They can be moved into or out of Set 1 depending on how they manage over the year.

Many schools assess at the end of the year and adjust the sets.

@SomethingBetterChange so you are agreeing that no sets, which is what the OPs school are changing to (except for top set), is the hardest to teach this backing up what OP is saying? I stand by my view that it's the middle ability/slightly brighter that are disadvantaged in this scenario.

There are always outliers, motivated DC that still achieve however how many of these children 'check out' or become unmotivated having to deal with a very mixed class.

Surely it's fairer on teachers to give a smaller ability range so they can focus and bring out the best in pupils. I'm not saying they can't teach h a broad ability range but why do it?!

@FawnFrenchieMum sorry - you're quite right I read in haste. All sets should be ability based to ensure your child is not held back. There is always evening or weekend tuition available if needed but it obviously costs...

I am just quietly boggling at a school with 5 teachers for every subject including music and drama. I assume that many of them are non-specialists?

Yep, lots. I'm primary but we review sets half termly and expect children to move.

I'd be very surprised if they are teaching those working very low or below keystage in those groups. Those children require a more personalised provision and often access the curriculum differently.

They might just not have advertised that to parents for various reasons.

But once you remove the very top and very bottom children, the range of the rest isn't unmanageably great.

Setting too rigidly can also be damaging because the lower middle children (for example) don't have more able children to bounce ideas of and the range of discussion is quite limited. Eg in English, they are only exposed to the thematic analysis or the vocabulary that they and their peers are capable of generating. Sometimes they need the inspiration. We're quite capable of supporting a range of lower to higher middles because the range isn't generally that great.

For example, there are children in my maths group (top) who are streets ahead and others who it was a fine line whether they were in my group or the one below. You can hear them explaining concepts to each other and rationalising thought processes - even in the top set there will be a couple who stand out as being well ahead of the others and a couple you're trying out to see how they get on. In the middle groups, this is more beneficial because, as I said earlier, the higher middles benefit from explaining their thinking and the lower middles benefit from hearing it from a peer and refining their own thinking.

Not only that but where do you draw the line? There isn't a simple and clear distinction between the majority of children. All of these groups/sets are 'best fit' because they're children and the decision is based on a number of factors - ie not just how they perform in a test. Eg confidence, personal pace, application/transference of skills, clarity of thinking.

We rank the children based on assessment scores and then have a discussion based on several factors before setting.

It would be naive of parents to think we just look at test scores and put the top 10 in one set, the next 10 in another, the next 10 in another and so on or whatever numbers are involved. Because it just doesn't work like that.

No one wants any child to be held back or struggle.

It's not fair on the children who are "2nd set" to be seated with kids who can't write a sentence or are disrupting the whole class.

Would there be any movement between these sets?

What if pupils in the 2nd set suddenly came on more academically....would they all be moved to the 1st set?

Would pupils in the 1st set who end up struggling be moved down?

It would be naive of parents to think we just look at test scores and put the top 10 in one set, the next 10 in another, the next 10 in another and so on or whatever numbers are involved. Because it just doesn't work like that.

That's broadly our starting point of course but it's not the only consideration.

@SomethingBetterChange that is exactly what my son's school does. After exams, the top 30 based on those exam results go into the top set for any given subject ..... The school has been v open and transparent about that. There are 7 sets for subjects, the lower down you go the smaller the class sizes.

I thought all schools did this. Top set is stretched, bottom set supported and middle try to get highest achievers to bring up the lower achievers because the gap isn’t that big.

Dd school only sets for maths (but d&t is in diff groups too). Her tutor group behaviour is awful!
Regularly sent to behaviour unit. Girls mostly.
But her maths set 2 is really loud snd chatty.

If its an academic school a kid could easily be set 2 but nationally 10-15 percentile and would have benefitted from setting.
The difference between sets can be huge and lower sets were weeks behind by end of term 1.
And that would be even more the case with only a set 1

. How exactly would op school support children who did manage to move up to cover missed content? As dc had zero help in this situation...
The lower sets are much more girl heavy.

This was standard when I was at school. It meant that the kids with no interest in being educated were kept away from the swots. I was in too tier for all my O level classes