Streaming in primary schools

[Pennies]

Is it common practice to have streaming for Maths and English in primary schools?

In ds1's year one class they are certainly put into ability groups for maths and literacy work.

Yes. It's not streaming as such -- just to ensure that children working in a group together are all at a similar level.

It is generally called setting and was used in all my children's primary schools (in 3 different areas of the country) so presume and hope that it is standard policy.

It is common practice but the children aren't labelled top, middle and bottom rather triangles, squares and circles or lions, tigers, hippos etc. Teachers have to provide diffentiated work, it's far easier if children are seated together (if further explanation needed or to help each other) and then TA's can work with less able groups (or whoever they are focusing on that day) rather than working with just one child at a time. Sounds a bit harsh streaming at that age but it is done in a low key manner and makes perfect sense. Also it is very easy to move children between groups so they aren't labelled for life or anything like that!

If your school has multi form entry you may well find that in the junior classes the sets will be of class size so that the children have to go from room to room for lessons.

Lilymaid, our school is just like you say.

In infants, the setting is done in classes, with children at different tables for different subjects. In the juniors however (this is a 2-form entry school) the two classes in each year are mixed up and then set for literacy and numeracy, with the children moving from classroom to classroom. One teacher takes the top set for maths and the lower set for English, the other teacher has lower set maths and top set English.

Interesting. Ds's new school is 2-form entry, but the children always stay within their own class for everything, but work in different groups. Your setup sounds rather better.

Our school has streaming for Numeracy and Literacy, just like Portonovo's, from the summer term of Year 1. So both classes (2-form entry) are jumbled up and divided into upper and lower ability sets. Then one Y1 teacher takes the upper set, and the other the lower, both of which contain roughly half of each class. The children are put into three ability groups/tables within the set too, so you get the 6-8 most able children across the year group working together and so on.

Just to complicate it even further - both my DSs were in mixed year classes in Juniors - 3/4 and 5/6. The sets were arranged top, middle, bottom (although that wouldn't be the official names!). The younger year group would get slightly different work to do than the older year group but would be working on the same topics.