Can we have a heated debate about ability setting in schools?

[pinksquidgy]

New education minister Nicky Morgan was rumoured to be considering making setting by ability a compulsory part of getting an 'outstanding' Ofsted classification. Caused a bit of a storm and now looks like she's rowing back.

When I heard this I thought 'I wish she bloody would'.

I know whole-class teaching/mixed groups are better for children who are struggling (for whatever reason) and I do get that that's important.

But I have two very bright DCs (i know, i know) and I cannot tell you how bloody sick I am of them being given things to colour in while the teacher gives most of her time to those who are at the lower end of the attainment range.

I'm guessing this is a result of the target culture - it seems to result in schools desperately scrabbling to get the 'D' student up to a 'C'. Students who were always going to be a B or an A just get left to stew and it's starting to drive me potty. (I do also realise this is partly a function of bad teaching and poor management - but that, unfortunately, is what our local primary is like.)

Don't clever kids matter too? Would it be so wrong to prioritise them just for once - maybe just for core subjects like numeracy and literacy?

My older DC has just gone up to secondary. EVERY single one of the 'clever' kids he started out with in infants (those who were getting similar SATS scores) has gone into the private sector or free schools, by hook or by crook. He is the ONLY one of his academic peers who has gone into a state comprehensive. This is the flipside of schools failing to look after clever kids: their parents simply opt out of the state system altogether - which is no good for anyone, surely?

I'm deeply committed to the ideal of comprehensive education in my heart (and in my wallet tbh) but once, just once, I'd like someone to think about what might work best for the children at the top end of the attainment range.

please don't kill me

I think it is a salient point that when we had academic selection we had 5 successive prime ministers: Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major all educated at state grammar schools since the wholesale demise of academic selection all our elected prime ministers: Blair, Cameron have been privately educated as are most of the cabinet.

I really have to disagree with this. 4 of these people were educated prior to the 1944 Education Act coming into force - namely Wilson, Heath and Thatcher. Thatcher and Wilson were scholarship pupils, (Heath went to a GS but whether on a scholarship or not, I don't know). I would suggest then that the Grammar Schools were more like the minor independent schools now. (My own father was a similar scholarship boy to Preston Grammar School which again was mostly fee payers). According to Wikipedia Callaghan attended the Portsmouth Northern Secondary School which does not sound like a Grammar School at all.

As for Major - he attended Rutlish Grammar School post the 1944 Education Act. Leaving school with 3 O levels to his name I would suggest that he succeeded despite his education, and not because of it.

So you could argue that Prime Ministers are normally the product of Independent Schools, but one was a product of the for-runner of a Secondary Modern School, and one a Grammar School failure.

Should have included Callaghan in the four prior to the 44 Education Act, but the point is still the same.

I think when people talk about Grammar Schools providing an escape for bright but poor children they are thinking of those times. Post war, I think the enormous shake up of the War years widened horizons and brought home to many the realisation that they were just as good as their so-called betters, plus an expanding economy offered opportunities.

Thinking of people who have done well, post war - Alan Sugar ia a name which comes to mind - he is most definitely not a grammar school boy.

James Callaghan attended the Portsmouth Northern Grammar school
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayfield_School_(Portsmouth)

The problem is not setting, it is teachers being inadequate at differentiation and enrichment for bright children in some cases. More training required.

Ability setting - do I support it. Well, speaking as a parent of a Grammar School child - the answer is a resounding yes. If we had ability streaming I would not have needed a grammar school for my child.

Secondary school teacher here.

Mixed ability would work if the gap between the least and most able wasn't so incredibly large. As it is we have students turning up in Y7 not being able to read and write their own language, whereas others are at a level 5 or even 6. I have to teach French to all these children - not easy to keep everyone engaged and working at their full potential. A typical Y7 class would also have between 5 and 10 students on the SEN register (who are not necessarily the least able!), all of which need special help and care. Not to mention the several students with behavioural problems which unfortunately take up a large amount of our time.

In my school, we set from Y8. It is true that this has clear benefits for the higher sets - they learn at a fast pace, make quick progress and disruptive behaviour is less of an issue. On the other hand, the lower sets are smaller and often have TAs in them, ensuring that less able students/students with special needs get more individual attention. We do our best to stretch the most able within these sets and we do expect all students to make good progress. It's not a perfect system but personally I think it's better than the alternative.

In most other western countries, children can be kept behind a year at primary school if it is deemed that they could do with more time learning to read, write and count properly. Some are allowed to skip a year, too. Both these measures are quite rare but they do result in fewer children coming into secondary school without the necessary skills to cope. Children develop at different paces and I find it ridiculous that all children born from 1 September to 31 August of a particular year are meant to all be learning everything at the same time. The reason that's given for preventing children from repeating a year is that it would affect their self-esteem negatively - I don't think that not being able to follow what's going on in secondary school does wonders for self-esteem, either...

Mumzy - it's hard to tell what Jim Callaghan's School was; from your wikipedia extract:

(The boys school had begun as the Northern Secondary School in Kingston in 1921).

However, if it was a grammar school, it would still bear out my point - pre war, grammar schools were fee-paying, so the Golden Age of Grammar School meritocracy is an illusion. (Post 1944 the nice but dim children could no longer go to them).

I would buy your argument if you could produce a long list of successful politicians who went to 1947 - 1970 (ish) Grammar Schools and can't produce successful products of Comprehensives.

I just tripped over this news: news.tes.co.uk/b/news/2014/09/04/major-study-to-look-at-setting-by-ability.aspx

Professor Becky Francis, who is leading the project, said that although previous research had looked at the impact of ability grouping, and even identified potential explanations for the lack of progress made by lower-attainment groups, it was unclear whether setting itself was the problem

...

Although research shows low-attaining children do better in mixed ability groups, she said surprisingly little work had been done in this field.

I agree that mixed ability classes would work if the gap between the least and most able wasn't so large. I work in KS1 and even at that age there are already significant differences in academic ability. I appreciate that the lowest achieving children in ks1 may well become the highest achieving children by the time they get to GCSE and vice versa, but with a good system of seeking, that would be fine.

I can see that setting might not work well for the least able, but I don't think that's a good enough reason to hold back the most able, and I think setting should be used much more effectively than it already is in primary schools as well as secondary.

I would be very surprised if Prof Francis's study doesn't turn up the fact that it's the poorer children, from the more dysfunctional groups in society who end up in the lower attainment groups and has little to do with the style of teaching.

Some of it undoubtedly, as has been mentioned here, is to do with parental and school expectations. Aspiring to go any University never mind study law or medicine, is 'not for the likes of us'.

Lavolcan. You mean children from the Poorest sections of society, not just in terms of wealth but in terms of generational educational achievement do the worst. The reason they do worse than other groups, is that they are sucked in to a vortex that surrounds them of lack of educational achievement and aspiration .
The only way to stop this is to pull the ones you can save I.E the brightest away from their vortex of misery . They need to be taken away from the environments of desperation and placed in surroundings where intelligence and hard work is the norm.

There is only so much that school can do in those circumstances Smokepole, a child's home environment is always going to be a bigger influence than their classroom.

Of course every effort should be made to allow those children to experience intelligence and high achievement, but not at the expense of other children.

BoffinMum Fri 05-Sep-14 21:17:54
The problem is not setting, it is teachers being inadequate at differentiation and enrichment for bright children in some cases. More training required.

I agree with that. But I would say 'the solution is not setting, and the problem is teachers being inadequate at differentiation and enrichment for bright children in some classes...'

My DCs got all the way through elementary school in the US without any setting, just good teachers who knew how to teach every child in a class appropriately and provide a challenge for everyone.

High school featured a huge variety of different 'tracks' which isn't the same as streaming.

I think setting has an adverse psychological effect on vulnerable children at an age when they are still sorting out their individual identity.

Chachah Fri 05-Sep-14 18:51:08
not really in favour of "ability" setting, for the simple reason that I think "ability" is near impossible to determine.
most often what you'll end up measuring is parental background and motivation instead.

I agree with this too.

Of the compulsory subjects at GCSE my school set in maths and science but not in English - better still they paired the most able in my class with the least so I spent most of my time teaching rather than learning, fine when it was the girl with a rubbish home life who wanted to learn but never had any support, less fine when it was the bot who liked to bounce a basketball off my head! Some of the class was totally feral and strangely I got my lowest grades in English.
I'm really hoping I can afford to send my kids private - otherwise I'd choose somewhere to live where the school set. I honestly think the kids who would have also been better in a smaller group at a pace they could follow rather than being utterly disengaged and running riot.

I don't think there is an ideal solution but would tend to lean towards setting as the best option to ensure each class progesses at the right pace for the pupils in that particular class. I can't believe that the best thing for everyone is for all children to progress at the rate of the slowest & least able child. Where does that get us in the end? As several posters have already said this just means most parents who can, scrape together enough for private school and don't go on holiday/get a new car/bigger house.

There is a belief out there that schools in Singapore teach in mixed ability classes having friends and family that live that I can say this is definitely not the case. Local Schools are highly ranked by ability and the testing frenzy to get into the highest ranked school has to seen to be believed.

DS1 attends a selective school whose ability group consists of the top 10% of the population even they set for maths by ability so the 1st group consists of the top 2%, 2nd takes in the next 6% and then the third the last 2%. DS1 says there is a clear difference in ability between all 3 groups. In his school the bottom set always gets the best teachers.

not really in favour of "ability" setting, for the simple reason that I think "ability" is near impossible to determine.
most often what you'll end up measuring is parental background and motivation instead.

I don't think it really matters what we are measuring in terms of ability or parental influence. What matters is the level at which a child is working and the pace at which they need to work. A child could have great potential and ability but if he can't read when he reaches high school there would be no point putting him in the top set because he wouldn't keep up and would fall even further behind. He needs to be put in the set which has the other children who also cannot read and then given the support and input required to help him progress as quickly as possible and move up a set if that becomes appropriate after a period of time.

smokepole - why are the brightest poor kids more worthy of saving from their 'vortex of misery' (good grief)than their less bright peers?

Completely agree with missunreasonable, what matters is the level that children are working at, not their innate ability or their parents income or influence.

Bearing in mind that we have so many classes of mixed year groups, the levels that children in the same class are working at can vary a huge amount. You could have the best teacher in the world who is excellent at differentiation, but I still don't believe that a very low achieving child is best placed in a class with a very high achieving child just because they are in the same year group or mixed year group class. Or vice versa. It doesn't do any of them any favours.

I think some of the argument against setting is more about protecting the feelings of parents who don't like to think their children are bottom set than it is about doing what is best for children.

As a teacher I hate setting. I agree with the poster who said more effective differentiation is needed. I have a mixed age, mixed ability class. When setting tasks I always ensure that there are several parts, each one progressing in difficulty. Some may only complete the first part, some will complete all. This also allows me more time to spend with the higher ability and middle kids as the weaker students have a task that matches their ability and they don't struggle so much.

I will tell that what I expect as a minimum but don't specify where they must stop as I want them to challenge themselves. This only works however if you have a line manager who doesn't then complain that some kids have only completed half the work! Also, I've attended a lot of extra training to be able to do this - all unpaid and in my own time. Many teachers may not wish to give up their time, or can't give any extra time so it really needs to be embedded in teacher training.

Surely differentiation is not just about tasks set, but is also about the input that a teacher is giving to the whole class, and the class discussion around that.

How can you have teacher input that stretches the thinking of the most able without it being completely over the heads of the least able. How can you effectively target your input on the ones that need the most explanation and time to think at the same time as keeping the highest achievers fully engaged?

" I can't believe that the best thing for everyone is for all children to progress at the rate of the slowest & least able child. Where does that get us?"

Is that genuinely what you think happens in mixed ability classes?

"How can you have teacher input that stretches the thinking of the most able without it being completely over the heads of the least able. How can you effectively target your input on the ones that need the most explanation and time to think at the same time as keeping the highest achievers fully engaged?"

I think we do tend to forget that teachers are not just randomly picked off the streets- probably because we all feel that we teach our own children so much that we secretly feel we could be a teacher easy peasy. But they are trained professional people who (usually) know their job. It's a bit like saying "how can a surgeon cut somebody open like that and take their appendix out?" Er- because that's their job?

In terms of teaching mixed ability, teachers plan their lessons way in advance and those that do it well can get children of all levels to progress. I have just finished Level 3 Supporting Teaching and Learning in Schools. I am fascinated with they way teachers do this. It has opened my eyes to the work of teachers which is not always apparent when you are a parent. They really can get all levels of children to progress. That is what they do. They don't leave any child behind.