Why do the best teachers teach...

[Frog253]

...the top sets?

I work in a school, and time and time again I see this anomaly and wonder how such things are decided? Surely the HOD / Assistant Heads, Deputy heads and experienced teachers should be teaching the more challenging pupils because teaching is what they are good at (otherwise they wouldn't have been promoted). Also they are paid more, in my mind it should be for doing some of the more difficult teaching jobs.

I know that the top sets arn't full of angels and low ability sets arn't all little sods but nevertheless the top sets are easier to teach because of their ability and behaviour in general. It would make sense therefore for the newer / less able teachers to teach these sets. In the same way I am sure inexperienced surgeons start with the easier ops while the experienced ones do the more challenging ones (perhaps I got that wrong too?).

We take it in turns!

Never heard of smaller top sets - they will always be min of 30 kids, sometimes 31/32 in this school, and every other i have taught in.
All teachers here get a mix of sets.
I have a lot of A level sets, a bottom and a middle y11, top y10, mixed ability y7 for next year

It sounds like a very odd school! Ours also shares groups out relatively fairly across staff, has massive top sets and small middle sets. Like it or not, the c/d borderliners are the most 'important' to the school so tend to get the most resources/staff made available to them.

'Best teacher' is a difficult term to quantify.
In my department I am the 'best teacher' for the bottom sets. I'm good at getting through to kids who struggle with the basics, I'm good with 'naughty' kids and I've a good grasp of different SEN. I wouldn't know an A* if it bit me on the arse, so I teach the bottom groups.
Another teacher in our dept has an amazing knack of converting B grade students to A/A* students, so she almost always has top set.
Our HOD is so skilled with the C/D borderline that we hardly get any Ds anymore! So you can see why he teaches set 4!
Honestly- there's no 'best' teacher, we all have different skills.