Two state secondaries, similar area, similar cohort - how come one year 8 top set maths class got 50% level 8's and the other got none?

[MyballsareSandy]

Title says it all really. I don't understand. Do different schools mark these end of year exams in a different way?

Dd has just finished year 8. She passed her 11+ so is quite bright. She got Lvl 7 and is one of only a handful that did. This is in a comp, not a grammar.

pique why not go to those more interesting places along the way? The danger of simply charging through the curriculum at top speed is that you turn kids off maths before you get to the interesting stuff. It's especially an issue with girls, who are more likely to report that they are intimidated by the pace of a top set and want to move down - and we definitely don't want to be turning more girls off maths than already are!

The really bright kids, the ones who would be ideal for STEP aren't so much an issue as the bright but not so keen ones. Once they've got their maths under their belt they might not be particularly interested in pursuing STEP papers (not going to study maths so will concentrate on other subjects). Then they end up not doing maths for a year or two before Uni, forgetting it all, then really struggling with their science degree (or whatever) that has a maths component.

And reading this I could get very depressed that DD2got a 6b and I'm not going to.

Three parallel top sets, so they can't hammer through the syllabus at breakneck speed and a supply teacher they hated. (Can't complain he's no good the GCSE set got in very well with him. DD2's class are a bit bolshy).

It will all come out in the wash next year as they have got the strictest, HW every lesson and no nonsense teacher. DD2 is not impressed. Tough luck

What's wrong with parallel top sets? Means they can be smaller, surely?

Three top sets mean a wider ability range in the class, not smaller classes.

Very good for encouraging the middle and less able DCs to believe they can do maths, but it's let some of the upper middle be lazy.

At my school DD2 would have had to work to maintain her top set place, with there system she hasn't.

@noblegiraffe: "why not go to those more interesting places along the way?"

Perhaps you can talk me out of this but at that level without some skills/tools from further along the curriculum I'm not convinced they will be that interesting or useful. My real concern is that it's as much about slowing some children down while others catch up as anything else. The background story is too long, but I need self-belief deficient DD to fly a little for the good of her future soul.

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@Hakluyt: "What's wrong with parallel top sets?"

Ability distribution, the shape of the 'bell curve'. It sounds like a weak bureaucratic compromise between hand-wringing equality-of-opportunity ideology and keeping Ofsted happy re. the 'curse of mixed ability'. The risk is demonstrated by @DeWee's post i.e. random luck might put the majority of the brightest in one class where they thrive in each other's company, but leaves another looking a bit lonely in the second class. Knowing DD's luck she would be the latter child.

I'm a maths teacher, because of the way our system us set up, we don't give higher than 7a in year 8. We expect to go wider not faster as noble giraffe said.

Our school has parallel top sets in the first two or three years, and them less so in the older year groups. Or they re jig the half years so one top set so more 'top', sometimes, I think. I think parallel tops are fine lower down the school in particular.

Keeping Ofsted happy, that is precisely why we have the setting structure we do.

@mnistooaddictive: That doesn't help. Saying 'wider' or 'breadth' or 'depth' or anything like reads like marketing jargon and tells me nothing about whether it is useful or useless. Can anyone give a specific (brief) example e.g. curriculum has X, and we add Y?

Well if I were teaching circumference of circles and the aim was to get through the curriculum as fast as possible I would tell them c=pi*diameter and we'd practise a bunch of questions and move on.
If I wasn't, I'd get out some sweet tins and Pringles tubes and some string. They'd measure the circumference and diameter and get some sense of pi themselves. I'd wax lyrical about pi, its applications and irrational numbers, probably going off on a tangent about infinity. Talk about the history of pi and how people worked it out in the olden days and how we work it out now. I might show them the numberphile video where they calculated pi using pies. We'd also do a bunch of questions. So I might pad a topic out like that.

Or we might spend some time on problem solving, or an investigation spanning a few lessons. Do some hands-on stuff. Make nets instead of just looking at them.

Thanks, that is a helpful example. I like context, connections [a la James Burke], the little stories and history, so if DD gets some of that at her upstream secondary then it might be OK.

That's interesting, noblegiraffe- what ds's teacher seems to have done this year is to give them that sort of investigating work to do as homework, which they then brought to the lesson to talk about, then in the lesson they did the "boring preachy bit". Which was much more interesting because they had worked on the context themselves first.

Also there are whole topics that aren't on the syllabus you can do. Bits of geometry and statistics, that are interesting and fun.

I did an extra paper at O level in Calculus and Coordinate geometry. The calculus fed directly into A level, the geometry was just a fun extra.

I'm not a mathematician, but I'm certain there are lots of things that by Y8/9 bright DCs have the understanding and basic algebra to enjoy.

Another exam

Sorry, start again
Another example is decision maths which is very modern maths and available as modules at a level. The concepts are very straightforward though, things like route planning and sorting. I did a lesson for my top set year 8 on route planning.
We also spent time problem solving and making games to practise key skills they learnt. They then played each other's and marked them. Lots of mathematicians are great at algebra but reluctant to write in sentences to explain what the algebra means in real life context, so we did that.
We also looked at wages for different jobs and worked out how much tax they would pay and how much they wod have left and then did budgets for a family- this was a real eye opener in an upper middle class market town.

The nrich website is good for challenging problems set at an appropriate level of understanding.

Alongside the national curriculum you can do nice things like look at the Fibonacci sequence in nature, or symmetry in architecture, look at patterns in Pascal's Triangle or work with Egyptian fractions. None of them will get you a level 8, but they might just spark an interest in something.

Route planning, decision making and sorting are the sort of thing that can lead into thinking about computer algorithms.

Budgeting is a brilliant one, DD2 really enjoyed an off timetable day they had looking into what a proper job payed and what rents were in the local paper and similar games.

"I'm certain there are lots of things that by Y8/9 bright DCs have the understanding and basic algebra to enjoy."

I thought on paper some of that KS3 basic algebra reaches into L8? Anyway it's precisely what I had in mind when talking of foundations for interesting places.

It would have been useful a few times in recent years for this or that little problem that came home from the primary 'additional maths'. DD has also told us a few times recently that future cohorts are "soooooo lucky" because she's heard about the computing/programming "I've missed out on! [::pout::]". If secondary doesn't do much e.g. just Scratch or similar, then I have a cunning plan to fix that some rainy day but ideally after she's very much at ease with middling algebra for both the programming and it's purpose.

"look at the Fibonacci sequence in nature"

That came home with the bleeping rabbits two years ago when summer-born DD was still eight! Although the mission was largely extending the series i.e. arithmetic, the topic was a bit premature.

Oh god, not the rabbits. I mean sunflower seed spirals, shells and tornadoes!

Ds got lvl 8 as did at least half of his accelerated maths set, Y8 comp. They did the 2009 ks3 lvl 6-8 papers for their EOY exam.
However, he is still lvl 5 in English, he is dyslexic.
He has always got maths and was bored half the year saying the work was too easy, he didn't even revise & almost got detention for refusing to make revision flash cards.

I have a dyslexic DD who got lumbered with double science when she could easily have done triple. She muttered about 'having to do a biology revision mind map"

"Oh god, not the rabbits. "

Part of the depth/breadth/context surely?

Having extended the series, there was a stack of ~15x170mm boxes in which they had to draw a dozen successive generations of (pairs of) rabbits. Dutiful, determined DD carefully set about that and by-and-by because very 'tired & emotional' trying to fit zillions into the available space.

Was possibly my most hissy scrawled note: there is a time and a place take the piss of out kids and it's never with mid-week homework at that kind of age.

'by-and-by because' -> 'by-and-by became'

Out of interest, is there any difference in the GCSE / A Level attainment at these two schools?