Why was I placed into the wrong set?

[kmo0416]

I can remember when I started at my secondary school in Year 7, I was immediately placed into Set 1 for Maths but with English it was more complicated. First, I was sent to Set 3 then told there wasn't enough space; then sent to Set 4 and told there wasn't enough space there; and so I was put into Set 5.

I'm not sure how sets are determined - probably via SATs scores - but I definitely was always at the top of my primary school and di well in my SATs so I don't understand what went wrong with my set allocation for English.

The teachers definitely noticed that I was much more capable than being in Set 5 and so the Head of English had a meeting with me one day and said she couldn't change my set since it was too late but she could after the mock exams of Year 7 passed in December. And so, I was moved up to Set 2 where I stayed for the rest of Year 7 and then to Set 1 in Year 8 where I stayed until the end of Year 11.

My question is: why would I have been placed into the wrong set to start off with and not been placed into Set 1 immediately?

did you apply late for secondary or move into the area just before you started?

in year transfers tend to get put where there is space until a set re-org is scheduled to happen.

Well when I went to secondary we applied late. They asked my Mum what set they thought I should be in and I was forever in the top set.

We've had a few set mix ups over the years, always down to human error and miscommunication, never by design. The best was when one DC was missed off the school register entirely due to a photocopying slip up.

Hello again, OP.

As your teachers said, when the sets are full, they have to do their best. No one was agin you.

Sets were shuffled following school exams, which weren’t too long after school started. So they were then based on more pertinent assessments than SATS. All’s well that ends well.

OP, how old are you?

If you know where you were in year 11 I assume you are now in the middle of your GCSE’s or older.

In which case, why does it matter? It was a minimum of 5.5 years ago. Life is too short to worry about such things that have no lasting impact.

Why does it matter? None of us can tell you the correct reason.

At our school sets were cross referenced. So, for example, if you were in X set for language you were in X set for some other subject. It didn’t always make sense. My DD was in top sets for all sciences but was in third set for math, when you think there would be more likely to be top for that too (as it happens it was quite correct, maths is her weakest subject, despite getting 8/9s in triple science).
Some students seemed to move sets a few times.
And you’ve already answered your question, it was space, and while they should have moved you up, they instead moved you down. But it seems they recognised the error and fixed it.

I believe she’s 19 or 20, she has certainly sat A levels.

The top sets often have more pupils in, so they may be totally full. Eg dd's sets in maths were:
Top set: 36
Second set: 33
Third-2nd from bottom set: 29-31
2nd from bottom: 20
Bottom: 10 (often with 2 teachers)

For both the top and second set, they had to share desks/text books etc because there were only space for 30.

So if that was the case, then they really couldn't have squeezed another pupil in easily to the top two sets.

When I started secondary school in 2006 our sets were determined by our CAT tests, rather than our SATs. Did you take those?

They don't always have your best interests at heart.

My daughter has a moderate learning disability and went to a special needs school. There was a pretty able girl there for some reason- I think her needs had been incorrectly diagnosed. She was in a different league to all the other students. She wanted to do gcse English and the school was over the moon and set up a class for it. But none of the other kids were remotely at gcse level. But they were forced to do the gcse curriculum, even though the whole point of the school was a modified curriculum.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, the authorities do what they like and often move kids around like chess pieces. You were just unlucky. I hope it hasn't affected your self esteem.

Schools do usually have students' best interests at heart. Unfortunately they don't have the money to give everyone what they need, and certainly not what every parent thinks they need.

It happened to me with one of my subjects. In my case they said it was because I had the same first name as another girl (although different surnames) in my year and they had mixed us up. It took months to sort out though (at least it felt like months).

Why on earth are you asking now? Let it
go. Move on.

Why are you bothering about this now? Maybe ot was a genuine mistake. Doesn't matter now.

Does it matter? There is lots of movement between sets in first years of secondary, you won’t be the only one and it seems it was sorted fairly soon.