No levels in schools

[treadwater]

If we're not having levels in schools anymore, what are we having to measure progress - does anyone know where can I read about new system in layman terms?

You only need to go over the same stuff over and over if you've set the tasks poorly. If you get the work pitched right in my subject it's perfectly possible to have all the class working productively with the teacher then free to have individual conversations with pupils, if they are all doing the same thing then the bright ones will be finished and bored after a few mins and the least able completely lost requiring you to keep repeating yourself. It's relatively simple to ensure that pupils are working with the same ideas but pitched at very different levels. It requires some planning ahead and perceptive questioning but is doable.

I know that Finland gets mentioned a lot but all setting is illegal there and their kids do just fine without it. It means that their teachers have to be better trained and skilled but that isn't a bad thing IMO.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29051923 This article covers some of the evidence around maths in particular.

I think I found the study that report refers to. It was done by OECD in 2012.
www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf
In order, the best performing countries are:-

1. China (Shanghai)
2. Singapore
3. Hong Kong
4. Taiwan
5. Korea
6. China (Macao)
7. Japan
8. Liechtenstein
9. Switzerland

10. Netherlands 11. Estonia 12. Finland 16. Germany 25. France 26. UK

So, Finland is much higher ranked than the UK (which is predominantly English), but is there some cherry picking going on? Surely, if you wanted to look for good practice to emulate, you'd look to see what those Asian countries at the top of the list do to get their results?

My dd was taught mixed ability maths for 5 years at secondary. I got all the guff about how it's the best teaching method... In year 11 she was left with her high achieving peers and a textbook for months, while the teacher focused on the d-c borderline.
It didn't work and my dd, who should have been put in for an early entry and who should have walked an A* in maths might end up with an A because the curriculum was so poorly taught. I am but the head of maths maintains his evangelical stance on mixed ability teaching.
I don't care what the research says, ask any of the kids in dd's class if it worked.
Setting works well in a comprehensive school with a wide range of abilities. Mixed ability works well when you are mixing kids who are broadly within the same ability range...
A level 3 and a level 7 mathematician in year 7 need almost entirely different curriculums.

If you read up about Finland, it's an entirely different society. It is very mono-cultural with an ingrained and long standing support for education and schools within the community. It works because of the culture it is in. To try and apply methods used out of that context is misguided.
Moreover, the Finnish schooling sorts by ability quite rigorously at 14 and although it is suggested that this is unproblematic, mist middle class parents want their children taking the "higher level" more academic route...

Mixed ability works well for some subjects. In maths it is a nightmare. The current year 8s for example range from a level 3c to level 8a. It's impossible to teach something that hits all pupils effectively. Even a broad range topic like solving equations would be nigh on impossible with such an ability range.

I have seen effective differentiation in subjects that are more 'writing based'.

There are multiple factors that affect attainment. The Asian countries do well because their children work harder than most of the world. Finland has put a lot of effort into training its teachers. Possibly Finland has become complacent.

We need to base educational policy on research rather than gut instinct.

I agree but you also need to base educational policy in the context within which you are working. The UK is very different from Finland for a vast number of reasons. What is more, if the research says that something is good but it is not working in the school that you are teaching in, then you need to apply some judgement and intelligence and figure out why. You can find research that will back up almost any point of view. Yes, be informed, and then make the best decisions for your students in your setting with the limited resources available to you.
In a comprehensive school with a high percentage of FSM, a problem with retaining teachers, a level 3 Ofsted rating and a national recruitment issue with maths teachers, mixed ability maths teaching was an idiotic decision and one that was stuck to through pure dogmatism. It was naive and overly idealistic at best. Less generously, it was negligent.

There's a lot of cherry picking in the PISA tests, especially in the "top" performing countries. Lots of kids get excluded, league tables of dubious provenance, indeed.

I'm hijacking the thread. Sorry OP. Differentiation for really able students is hard to get right due to limited resources... Could you buddy up your son with a mentor? Maybe a maths undergraduate from a high achieving university who could do maths classes to extend and inspire your son?
I agree with you initial point about levels and in your situation would approach the school and see if he can be timetabled with year 10s next year to start his GCSE early.

Poor teaching is poor teaching though. It won't be magically solved by putting students into sets. If the teachers aren't very good then they aren't very good. Yes that article mentions Finland... It also mentions Japan and South Korea where setting in maths is much less common than here. Whatever makes their maths teaching better than ours is not linked to setting or streaming.
Too often in teaching we ignore evidence-based approaches to go on "common sense" and "anacdata". Even within the UK evidence shows mixed ability classes get better outcomes. If a teacher can't or won't differentiate for mixed ability classes where the need for it is so obvious then the chances of kids in a set taught by them getting the sort of personalised learning they need are practically zero... Which is how situations like the one in the OP arise.

That is all true Fuzzy Wizard. I am not trying to stipulate a "common sense" approach, I read a lot of research. However, it is a teacher's job to apply research with a critical eye. What works in Helsinki might not work in Kings Lynn...
I sometimes feel that the "in Finland.. " mantra is the educational equivalent of the AP mantra "in Africa all mothers..." You always need to consider context. I'm bowing our now. I need to stop ignoring my kids

I might be missing something (probably am!), but where are the advantages for more able children being discussed or measured in the OECD study?

I admit to skim reading, but the focus seems to be on minimising the outcome gap between the most and least able, and all the responses - from govt ministers etc - appear to be about how setting disadvantages the less able.

If you seek to minimise a gap (any gap), you may think of it as raising standards for the lower scoring, but you can also do it by lowering the outcomes for the higher scoring.

What exactly are the advantages of multi-ability grouping for the more able? How does it help them aim higher and reach their potential?

I could see how mixed ability teaching could work in arts and humanities subjects, where children could be asked to produce written work of varying complexity, but not so much STEM subjects. The maths required to attain A gcse is different compared to an E grade on the foundation paper. Would all children be taught the A content? Do you teach one group one thing and another group something else while those not being taught get on with written work? How would it work? I cannot think that the teaching Maria's dd received was how it is supposed to work, but nor can I see how it would be possible to make it work.

var, the problem is that research shows actually that while setting doesn't improve things for the vast majority of children, it does work for the most able, and they get improved results. Which is an impossible circle to square (although in my book, a very good argument for super-selectives, as taking out the top 1 or 2 percent doesn't really disadvantage anyone else).

And, I also think you're right about the difference between the top few percent. The best explanation I've been given is to think in terms of standard deviations. One standard deviation is the difference, roughly, between an average child and the top table. Two standard deviations - so a child who is as different again - takes you to the top 2%. Three standard deviations, approximately the top 0.5%. So these children are twice as different from the top table kids as the ttk are from the average. It's hard to make it work in an average school.

Fuzzy, am really interested in your perspective here as I am thinking hard about where DD will go in a couple of years time, and part of that thinking involves setting. Even in English. How is she not disadvantaged if, by Yr7 or 8 she is, most likely, able to read an entire play/book but is only ever given excerpts?

Maybe the answer is obvious - set the top 10% and have mixed ability classes for the rest?

"Add message | Report | Message poster var123 Sun 26-Jul-15 20:34:08
Maybe the answer is obvious - set the top 10% and have mixed ability classes for the rest?"

Ah... Bring back the secondary modern!

My son's school has a top set science and the rest are mixed ability. The children who are top of the mixed ability set stand no hope of getting a science education. Thankfully ds was lucky enough to get in the creamed group.

What would make more sense would be to get rid of the bottom 10% who either have severe learning difficulties or are belong in a zoo disruptive and teach them in tiny groups.

That was what they did in the 70s and 80s. "Remedial" was what they called it!

I watched a programme about the demise of grammar school on bbc a couple of weeks ago.. It was really interesting, not least to see all the politicians who so favoured smashing the grammar system fondly recalling their own grammar school days. (Neil Kinnock etc)

Don't get me wrong... If I was looking for a school for my own child I would prioritise one with good teaching above their setting arrangements. If a school with mixed ability teaching isn't giving students the full play they are studying I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. That doesn't mean I would expect them to read it in full in class but students should have a copy and read chunks as homework with excerpts explored in more depth in class.
I would be aware though that in many schools with setting the strongest teachers are assigned to middle sets with top sets and bottom sets given whoever is left especially in GCSE years . That in part is due to accountability measures focusing on the c/d borderline. New accountability measures will remove the incentive to do this in most subjects but not English and maths unfortunately.
I know of a school that recently switched from mixed ability to settled English for GCSE. They then assigned their best teachers to the c/d sets. Their a-c pass rate shot up but the number of a-a grades dropped a fair bit.
This is what high-stakes accountability measures have done unfortunately .
I have once had the misfortune to come across a teacher who doggedly refused to differentiate anything, got frustrated with kids who asked for help and used the more able as unpaid TAs... This is crap teaching. If the person taught top set they'd still have been crap. If they'd taught bottom set I dread to think what would have happened to the poor kids. Just because they failed to teach mixed ability well doesn't mean it's impossible... I'm really proud of what I do with mixed ability classes... Last year I had students predicted Ds walk away with As- in subjects where they had been setted they weren't taught the A grade material... Another two got As with B predictions... A month before the exam I would not have expected any of them to get those grades but it all seemed to click fairly late in the day and they had been taught what they needed for the higher grades. If we'd setted them it wouldn't have benefitted a single one of my students IMO... One of the B prefictions is now looking to be a potential Oxbridge candidate having really flown at A level so far. The students for whom A came more easily lost nothing by being in a mixed ability environment as far as I can see, student feedback via whole school surveys shows that they find history challenging and interesting.

History may be an exception. Isn't it about learning the accepted facts and then recording them on paper whilst arguing from various viewpoints? (Sorry if that's an over simplification - i didn't do history). It easy to see how that would lend itself to differentiation, with the lower ability students simply delivering more facts and fewer interpretations.

However, imagine having mixed ability in a biology lesson. The lower ability ones are struggling to remember the terminology and could do with another run through whilst the high ability ones are busy computing probability based on recessive and dominant gene possible pairings. When the teacher addresses the whole class, what is s/he meant to talk about: we have now learned the words, genes, chromosomes, DNA, double Helix and Francis Crick or we have now ready to talk about mutated chromosomes?

Honestly, i want my children to be taught, not just left in the class to make up the numbers. Its not their fault that they are clever and they should not be treated as though they are worth less because of it.

PS the bit about read the play sent shiver down my spine - DS1 (top set in year 8 english) was given various books this year, but only excerpts. They only accessed the whole Hamlet story via a cartoon version as even the classic film was considered too challenging!

var123,
The problem with the grammar school system was that children who went to the secondary moderns rotted. There were bright children who suffered from low expectations. The grammar schools attracted the best teachers and a completely different curriculum.

There was a lot of arbitary unfairness with the old grammar school system. My mother had mumps and could not take the eleven plus. She was lucky in that her parents paid for her to attend a private school until she could take the 13 plus. She did really well at the grammar school and got three good A-levels.

In someways a really gifted child suffers as much in the top set as they would in a mixed ablity class. In a setted situation teachers can become really lazy about differentiation.

In spite of advances in technology teaching is the same as ever. I feel that better research into online learning could be a way of doing differentiaton better.

was that what the non-grammar schools were called? Secondary modern? I thought secondary modern was the name given to the new system of schools that appeared in the late 60s/ early 70s. I think we've been talking at cross purposes.

The grammar school system certainly had imperfections, not least the false positives and the false negatives that were thrown out by the 11+. Movement between the two should have been more dynamic (and less shameful) but it does seem t me that they threw the baby out with the bath water when they got rid of grammar schools, because I don't think anyone argues that modern day comprehensives are as good as grammar schools once were.

Good differentiation should always be pitched at the top and then scaffolded down. So in your example I would say that the discussion should be about mutating chromosomes with clarification of terminology as needed and support for weaker students on the tasks that followed, there are also fairly simple ways to involve the less able in high level discussions- earlier in the lesson I will have a conversation with them and explain something to them and then later might say "hey child-struggling-to-reach-a-D we had an interesting conversation about X why don't you explain it" they are then part of the conversation about ideas that they may find incredibly challenging. They may only take in some of it at the time-that doesn't mean they may not get it later.

I realise I sound a bit crazed and evangelical but I do believe in really good mixed-ability teaching. Not to say there isn't some rubbish mixed-ability teaching out there but there is also some rubbish top-set teaching too. Good mixed ability teaching should not be pitched to the middle with extensions to keep bright kids busy and vocab sheets for the less able. It should be lively and engaging, the bright should be able to enthuse and think laterally and the less able should feel confident to have a go and be exposed to the full richness of the curriculum IMO. Seating is important to this... Children within the class should be sat with those of broadly similar ability IMO. If you put the brightest with the weakest (and I know some in teaching advocate this ) it can wreak havoc. It's crap for both... the brighter ones end up doing the work for them and giving the answers. This holds back the bright (but keeps them busy) and prevents the less able from figuring stuff out for themselves.

I'm convinced! (Sincere) But in the real world... where there are weak teachers and inexperienced teachers and cover teachers and lazy teachers and over-worked teachers and disenchanted teachers ... is it still better to give these teachers a mixed ability class to deal with, do you think?

Fuzzy your example of mixed ability works, in an argument /opinion based subject.

Try the same in maths and it totally falls apart. I've tried it and trying to teach kids who don't know their tables how to solve a quadratic equation is a nightmare. Like a pp said, the UK is different to Finland. I could teach a well differentiated lesson on some maths topics, however quite a lot of the time I would be leaving students flailing.

Highly rated OECD countries often exclude groups of pupils that are included in the UK.

Progress 8 should help decrease the pressure on c/d borderline teaching.