Year 1 Sets

[Royaldada]

From your experiences is it normal for schools to set by ability for numeracy and literacy, to have mixed ability sets for both subjects or to have one set by ability and one mixed

Because in DDs school they set by ability for numeracy but not for literacy which is mixed

My Ds's school divide into different ability tables within class in yr1.
In yr2, they mix all the children from all the class and divide into different ability groups and taught in different class.
Both maths and English.

I teach Year 1. I have sets for English and Maths, and the children work in their home-groups (which are mixed ability) for other subjects. I occasionally use their home groups for maths as well - it can work very well for some lessons.
Although I have sets for English I can see why mixed ability groups could work as the input is going to be the same for all children and the differentiation is often more in terms of expectations of different children.

I know my ds's class has different tables with maths, and they have reading groups (roughly on same book band), not sure if they sit in their reading groups for literacy though.

I would think it was quite unusual to set in Y1. However, if you were going to have sets I can see that a school might choose to set for both, or maybe just maths?

I think literacy is easier to differentiate by outcome rather than input. You can ask thirty kids to write a character description of someone in a book and you will get v different results. With Maths, it's harder - there is no value in someone just doing the same task faster or more easily. Children who have a better understanding of the concepts do need something a bit more complex to do or they will stagnate. You can't ask everyone to do 25*9 - some children will find this very hard or impossible and some will find it ridiculously easy and not have to think about it.

My DC school set from YR in phonics teaching as some take longer than others to catch on. Everything else was done in class but on tables for different levels. Personally, hate streaming from such a young age.