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

Amber, if every parent put their child first and valued their education, there would be far fewer schools that are considered to be undesirable. The schools that parents try to avoid by paying school fees, attending church when they aren't religious or moving catchment don't exist because of bad teachers. They exist because of bad parenting, which leads to disruptive behaviour and low attainment.

So I really do think that if every parent put their children first in their own lives, we would have a better society.

Lily, that is really interesting, and tbh matches my everyday experience in the classroom AS LONG AS it is on a subject by subject basis to allow for the fact that children are not 'high ability' or 'low ability' across the board - hence the child I know who has failed her maths GCSE for the second year running from a highly selective grammar: selected on VR alone, the spikiness of her profile and her lack of ability in Maths was undetected on entry. Equally very, very able mathematicians are found in the top set of our neighbouring comprehensives, because in a VR test alone, they didn't excel.

yy, should def be subject specific

takver I wasn't meaning to imply that the comprehensive model has contributed to the lack of social mobility .

It's just that we were sort of expecting the polar opposite .

Nor do I think a wholesale return to the grammar system will do the trick.

I think I'd like to see the introduction of super selective across the country.

Then rigorous and flexible setting in the remaining comps.

However I am now fairly unconvinced that any educational model will provide the societal equalisers that most people want and expect of it.

I agree with you there, wordfactory, I think too much is put on the educational system, and if we want to address inequality we need to look at other aspects of society.

PRoblem with any sort of selective is that it just encourages parents to play the system and the ones who can spend £££ on tutors can buy an advantage in the entrance tests.

"It is in our own children's interests for them to have well educated and well motivated peers, and each of us getting the best education we possibly can for our own children is beneficial to society because society needs well educated people."
"well educated", "well motivated", "society needs well educated people" What do all these mean? I used to work in a HE. I met many lecturers and professors went to famous unis. Not all of them however many of them are just real talkers with no practical experience or common sense, and cannot think outside of their boxes. They are “well educated” talkers and writers. They were “well motivated” to pass exams and went to famous unis and then look down on the rest of the world. Do “society needs well educated people” like these? Many of these well educated people are also somewhat feeling unfulfilled / miserable. For a lot of these people HE qualifications are the only thing in life. We have far too many textbook experts already.
Of course we want every child to be able to do maths and read and write to a reasonable standard. However we need people with real hands-on skills and ongoing knowledge, creativities and able to adopt changes in future.

I think the "put your kids first or wider society first question" is a good one as it unifies almost everyone. I often hear peoples political views and am then surprised by their actual actions.

I also find the "level education will lead to greater social mobility" argument lacking in substance. There is little evidence to support it and it often descends in to the usual state/private debate which, as already identified here, isn't the real driver for social immobility. Pre-existing wealth and parental influence are the drivers for social immobility. If you take all the "Tarquins" out of private school and put them in comprehensives you will add, on average, perhaps 1 to each class nationwide. This will not improve the social mobility of the other 29 classmates - that's a fallacy. Let's also remember that only a very small percentage of private school students are any brighter than the rest of the population so the overall academic benefit will be limited too. Just because parents pay school fees doesn't mean they are bright too. People get hung up on the big public schools, forgetting that they are not even 0.1% of schools (Eton etc).

The other dimension is that there are only a small number of "jobs" that people want to see more diversity in - government, judiciary etc. That can be fixed without any change in the education system.

Finally, rather than focus on secondary schools, people should focus on university admission policies. If Oxbridge really is the "ticket to the good life", then let's examine how they select and see if they should change their selection further towards a progressive system.

lilly I think there must be a way round that.

There is no way an averagely bright kid could be tutored into getting into Colyton et al.

And I suspect most parents wouldn't want their kids to go unless it suited. Especially if the comps settled properly?

dad I think the best bet for society would be to ensure as many people from ordinary backgrounds found a voice in arenas that mattered on a macro level.

And the best way to do that is to get them to highly selective universities. How we do that is always up for debate.

Oh I would just want those diverse voices in the judiciary etc I want them in industry and finance and the media and all those other back rooms that really rule our lives

I think I'd like to see the introduction of super selective across the country.

Which rather assumes that we all live in large conurbations. Unless we start to increase state boarding provision for those children who are not within reasonable travelling distance of such a super-selective. Half the children where I live are bused in to the local comprehensives anyway. I can't really see that many parents wanting 100 mile round trips for their eleven year olds.

Then rigorous and flexible setting in the remaining comps.

Who is to say that this doesn't happen already? There are fashions in education and presently mixed ability teaching appears to be out of fashion. I suspect that the majority of secondary schools have some form of setting these days, but how each school does it, is up to them. Some will set rigidly and have little movement between sets; others will regularly review a child's progress.

Tbh, having taught in very different primaries, the gap between children, parhaps of eqaul 'inborn intelligence' but with very different home lives, is already too large at 4. Amnd it requires exceptional teaching, dedication and supportive social care to narrow that gap by 11 - and that involves a choice, made at every level from the individual child's teacher to government policy, as to how to allocate necessarily klimited resources. By which I mean, if I have in my class a 5 year old who poses exceptional social problems, but possibly a high level of 'inborn intelligence', and a 5 year old who is displaying their identical inborn intelligence to the full, having always been full;y supported by nurturing and ambitious parents, there is always a question of balance: do I, does society, plough in the very high amount of money, effort and time to overcome the barriers the first child has, or do I and society choose to give slightly less to that child in order that the other child can continue to display and develop their identical intelligence to the maximum? Of course, ideally we would always do everything for every child, but at some level is DOES come down to a choice, because no budget is unlimited and no day is 100 hours long.

There is, of course, always a debate as to what you base setting on.

DS / DD's comp sets increasingly - only in maths for Y7 (but small group SEN provision / individual support), setting for almost everything by Y10. I remember a parent asking wh they didn't set for everything from the beginning of Y7: 'Because we want to see how every child performs when given equal opportunities to show what they can do' came the reply. Some primaries they draw from are excellent, some less so; some pushy, others relaxed; some private, most state; a SATS factory or two, others very relaxed about results. The secondary felt that it was fairest, for most subjects, to teach everyone the same for the first year, with in-class differentiation and individualised SEN support, before judging who should be in which set.

teacherwith2kids

I think your point is supported by evidence that the divide between children in academic terms starts as early as 22 months (fairly sure I read this on Sutton Trust research) which is all about parenting, environment and motivation.

lavolcan they have one in Devon ! Seems to work.

And no parent will be forced to send their DC to one.

I think the 'elephant in the room' here is that, if we genuinely want social mobility, then that involves directing resources away from 'typical MN' children ... to say that we have to give more to the 'have nots' if we really want such children to catch up with the 'haves'. And the evidence seems to show that wherever some mechanism is put in place to try to achieve this - SureStart centres, the state grammar schools etc - they are often 'suibjverted' by the 'haves', in other words that the 'haves' use their greater knowledge and greater power to gain access to those services and provision that, through their excellence, were aiming to level the playing field...

[And this is usually justified as being 'beter for society' because we need highly educated people to take key positions in society - and it is easier to get the 'haves' to this point than the 'have nots'. I agree that getting some 'have quite a lots' to top positions - so putting state educated haves, rather than the Eton educated haves, in key positions of power - is good. But it is not the same as genuine social mobility that would see the 'have nots' gain equal access.]

teacher I agree.

Which is why I would like supers selectives.

All the cash and sharp elbows in the world won't get a child with a high enough pass mark without the natural ablity .

In the private sector it doesn't matter how pushy or rich the parents or how good the prep , the kids still don't get places at the most selective schools.

Start getting kids from ordinary backgrounds into schools like thisand we will soon see them at the LSE, at Oxbridge and all the other establishments from where the movers and shakers hail

I agree though that this probably wouldn't catapult many seriously disadvantaged kids. But a few would do me. And a good amount of just ordinary kids. Not dysfunctional families but normal working class ones where they would support their kids to high heaven but might not have the knowledge

Word, but we have a local superselective - and there are hundreds of kids from ordinary backgrounds who don't get in because 7 years of private school coaching to the test + 2 years of weekly intensive coaching do 'buy' the wealthy bright kids places over those 'ordinary' kids of simnilar intelligence.

I know it won't get a mediocre rich kid in. But when it is the top 0.1% who get in, a child within the top 5% can be coached in - and a child genuinely in the top 0.1% who has no test prep won't.

Testing EVERY child, from every school, with a test that changes every year and cannot be coached for [pipe dream of mine] would work. Or individual ed Psych testing, as is done for special schools for the other end of the spectrum. But not the current superselective system.

The other way is to stop having a selection by university based on 'AS levels marks, school attended' etc but to have an exam that will separate the ones who are doing well from the others.

In france, the selection process into the top schools (Engineering schools, business schools etc) has always being extremely competitive and done through a competitive entrance examination. It means that bright children, regardless of the schools they come out from can prepare for that exam and WILL get through.
To encourage social mobility even more, there is now some 'special' exams for people from deprived areas. The entrance is still competitive but a different one and they have extra support from their 'normal' teachers (for their Alevels). It has now being going on for a while and has shown that these young people coming from deprived areas (where none of them had ever even dreamt of doing that), not only have managed to pass the exam but have done just as well in the school to get their diploma (equ. master degree).
It's the equivalent of a teenager coming from a rough area of London or Middlesbrough going into Cambridge or Oxford.

Sometimes, having some'special' entry criteria for the more deprived allows to prove that they can do just as well than the more privileged ones.

Of course, you need to accept that those more privileged that would normally have had a place suddenly won't have it.....
And that marks at Alevels and which schools you are coming from aren't the all in all and do NOT show your actual ability.

Well the university where I work does try; we have aptitude tests and contextualised offers.

But ultimately there is resistance to do the job of state schools for them. If we accept that some schools are do crap they can't help poor but very bright children then where does that leave secondary education?

Also, with the best will in the world, we need students who have already achieved a fair amount. They would not thrive here if they came too far behind .

"Sometimes, having some'special' entry criteria for the more deprived allows to prove that they can do just as well than the more privileged ones.

Of course, you need to accept that those more privileged that would normally have had a place suddenly won't have it....."

Absolutely true. But politically very tricky!

WordFactory, I think you have to remember that superselectives are only ever realistically going to be an option in larger towns & cities. It's like the Technical schools that were meant to be the third plank of the grammar/technical/secondary modern system, they just didn't get put in place because in so many areas there weren't enough children to fill three schools.

Looking at 'movers and shakers' in terms of government, I think the notable change has not been the loss of grammar schools, but the change to a professionalisation of politics. The fact that we no longer see MPs coming through the routes of unions and local government has been a significant change on both sides. I'm on the left, but I'd far rather see a right wing govt made up of people with substantial real world experience in business and / or local government than the current politicians who have no experience outside Westminster. (Same is true for Labour, of course.)

From the point of view of a former Teacher I am against ability setting now. It works well generally for the higher sets but in my experience was devastating for lower-ability sets. Not always the case I know but low ability and poor behaviour sadly do often go hand in hand, whenever I taught low ability sets it became clear that in most of their lessons they were little more than 'babysat' for, the poor behaviour and lack of ambition became more and more embedded as they were surrounded by it and had nothing to aspire to. Many of the Teachers probably tries hard to make a difference but the challenge they were face having so many students with learning challenges was just too much for most. It was a really sad situation actually. In the few subjects where these students were integrated they behaved in a more mature way and generally tried harder, had a great effect on them.