Streaming in senior schools

[Purpleblob]

Hi should schools set out their policies on how they decide to stream or can they not say? My son has been told no matter how good or bad the exam results are people never move sets and school won’t say why

Do you mean streaming or setting they are different. Steaming is very outdated so I doubt a good school is doing that.

Told by who?

And do you mean streaming, where they are in the same groups for all subjects by general overall ability, or setting where they could be top set maths, bottom set french?

School governor here. Our school changes its approach to setting from year to year, depending on the needs of the cohort. So no, it wouldn't be published as a school policy. Flexibility is important.

For what it's worth, in key stage 3 our school usually sets for maths/science, but loosely so that there are two parallel top sets, two parallel middle sets, and one or two lower sets. The lower sets are usually smaller classes as those students need additional support. They used to do something similar for English, but more recently they have used mixed-ability sets for English and found that the lower attaining students make more progress with no impact on the progress of the higher-attaining students. Of course, if teaching mixed ability sets, teachers need to be skilled in differentiating.

Thanks all - I mean setting. The teacher at parents evening said people can’t move down or up even if performing higher/worse than other sets. There are 4 sets of going from top to bottom. The school also tell you where your child comes in band for exams so I can see my child is in top 10/20% but was told they cannot move up to topset which have the top 25% as they cannot move students down

They actually overfill the top set and have 30% of the year in it. I am not sure my son would enjoy top set but trying to understand why school are saying there will be no changes

It's quite common to put more students in the top set than the lower ones, as they generally need less individual attention (although there may be rather more work to mark).

In every school I've taught in there has been the possibility of moving sets, especially during key stage 3. Obviously the down side of this is that you can't only move pupils up a set; often someone else will have to move down to make space. However pupils knew that, so if they were at the bottom end of a set they always knew it was a possibility - sometimes it would give them a bit of extra incentive to work harder.

It sounds as if your school doesn't want to do the difficult bit of explaining to parents that their child is moving down a set - yes, that's not nice to have to do, but it's better than keeping other children in a set which is not best fit.

We once had a difficult situation when a big move of a department by one employer meant a sudden influx of new pupils, most of whom turned out to be top set material. In one year, that meant we needed to move a few pupils down from set 1 to 2, then some from set 2 to 3, and so on. We had to send a very carefully worded letter to explain to the parents of the children concerned that their child had not suddenly got worse at maths; we'd just had to draw the set boundaries in different places. They all understood, so it isn't necessarily such a problem to move children down a set.

I would ask for a meeting/call with the senior staff member in charge of attainment and state if you would like your child to move and why.

If you don't want them to move then there is no point having the meeting!

@Purpleblob which subject is this?

@Mythicalmol this is in maths

School should absolutely be moving then. Our school changes sets all the time, my daughter goes between one and two, and each time they get it spot on as she needs a bit more nurture for a term or so then moves up. They don’t only tell us about it but they talk to the children about why they are making the move. This is an outstanding state school so perhaps the staff are more up to date on this sort of thing?

Could it be that they only change sets at certain points e.g. start of a new school year or end of key stage? All I'm thinking from a teacher's pov is that logistically it would be a nightmare if after every test you had students joining/leaving your class. Also, progress is often not linear, so just because a student does better on one exam does not mean they will do well on the next test necessarily. I would want to see the student consistently doing better on tests before moving them up. Also, if one child moves up, then another has to move down a set which they might not want to do. It's often easier just to leave the sets as they are for the whole year. If the teacher is good they will be able to stretch the top students regardless of which set they are in.

for last 18 months my son has been in top 20% so it is why I was surprised they said there was no movement. I think if they wait a whole year there would be no movement as the top set are always further ahead