Maths setting advice

[YoungJoseph]

DD and her friend have been put in one of the lower abililty maths groups (3 of 4) at their new comprehensive. This has come to a surprise to us as they did well in their SATs-4a / 5-these weren't surprise scores, these were as expected over the time spent in primary.
I work in the school and I find these groups tend to have more challenging behaviour and lower expectations (which seem to lower as time goes on). Her group has also been given a NQT to teach them. Experienced teachers are teaching the top groups grrr
In my experience the groups aren't divided equally either, so the top sets will be rammed full whilst the lower sets have fewer children, so the opportunity to move groups is limited.
I am disappointed that her hard hasn't put her in 2/4.
It's not just her SATs result either, my knowledge of her and of the sets would have put her in the second from top group.
Clearly I have my view from working at the school which is one sided I suppose so any advice or experience is welcome.
DD isn't unhappy btw, I don't want to interfere and make the situation worse.

"The reality is that by the time they get to secondary"

Yesterday I playfully asked Y7 DD to rate the difficulty of the work in three weeks of lessons in the two obvious subjects. Accompanied by some independent, thoughtful and credible justifications she arrived at this:

English (mixed-ability): 4/10
Maths (parallel top-set): 4/10

I'm sure you're right about some schools and some children, quite possibly many, but that's not the entire story and there was a non-trivial number of children penned in by L5 teaching and assessment ceilings, low expectations, at primary. Although they made a new limit of L6, the primary school's expectations improved in several way before DD got to upper-KS2. It's too early to judge the 'Good' (ambitious) secondary, but I'm pining for the ethos we've lost because so far they seem to fit this reality:

I’d suggest that OfSTED is correct in highlighting KS2-KS3 transition which is hardly a national success story; I hear this all the time. I’ve called it the Berlin Wall of our system and far too often, Y7s are babied and patronised instead of allowed to fly from the position they reached in Year 6. From Day One, some children are systematically under-challenged; they are not expected to work as hard as they could and their sights are set lower than they could be… in some schools. Maybe not yours.. [Tom Sherrington]

My ds got a level 5 in Maths and he struggles with it...no way would I expect him to be in top sets. Dd got a level 4 and she has been set with children who were in the top maths sets in primary school. At their primary 66% of children get a level 5 which was considered average for our area.

Meant 66% get at least a level 5.

YoungJoseph:

DD1 got a level 6 in maths and is at a state secondary comprehensive which does not stream/set in any subject until Year 8. So our reality is 3 weeks into the school year DD1 has only had about 5 minutes of homework because the teacher thinks most worksheets started in class can't be finished in class (although DD1 has always finished in class). The 5 minute homework thing was because the teacher forgot to give out one worksheet in class - so gave it out as they were leaving (4 pyramids or adding numbers to make a target - dead easy stuff for DD1 - finished in

YoungJoseph:

Just to put the NC L4 concept into context - see guardian statistics for KS2 Maths results here: www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/sep/19/sats-results-key-stage-two - scroll to table at bottom.

In 2013 - 41% of all pupils scored NC L5 or higher with 85% of all pupils scoring NC L4 or higher.

I fear a 4a/5c is starting to look 'very average' for end KS2 results.

The government hasn't published KS2 results yet this year - but preliminary information (www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/347653/SFR30_2014_Text.pdf) suggests 1% improvement at both NC L4 and NC L5 (not sure if that reads 1% more achieving NC L4 or 1% more achieving NC L4 or better).

But presuming the former - that would mean

87% of pupils in 2014 achieved NC L4+
45% of pupils in 2014 achieved NC L5+ at KS2 SATs.

So nearly half of all pupils are achieving NC L5 (one full NC Level above government 'floor standard' of NC L4).

HTH clarify the NC L4 being 'good standard' thing.

The levels are higher as the Primaries are being judge even more harshly on progress, same as secondaries. When I started 6 years ago the expected progress for a student at secondary was 3 levels of progress from Yr 7- Yr 11, so effectively come in at level 4 end at level 7 which is a Grade C - now we are expected to get 4 levels so that level 4 should end with a Grade B.

I hate teaching mixed ability in Maths - we used to take till half term to set but have pulled it back this year to having sets sorted by Week 4 of term - it is a huge challenge to teach a class where you have students coming in on a Level 2 or lower all the way up to Level 6 which we have had for the past 3 years now so seems to be the way it is going - I have a huge respect for Primary teachers who do this regularly.

Its one of the arguments we used to push for earlier setting - both ends get bored - top due to lack of challenge bottom as they can't access the work.