Secondary School that doesn't set: any experience?

[Tomatillo]

I was at an open day for our catchment secondary this week and was surprised to find out that they have just moved to a system where there is no setting at all for any subject in any year. Has anyone had experience of this? Does it work, especially for the brightest?

The teacher who is leading this at the school said that the research showed that only the top 10% benefitted from setting and that removing setting was neutral for the middle band and beneficial for the bottom half. They also talked about the benefits for self-esteem, behaviour and teacher expectations. Assuming this is all correct (I've not yet looked it up in detail) then I can completely see why a comprehensive school (which this is) would want to do this for the benefit of everyone. The difficulty is that we're pretty sure that DD is well within the top 10% for the core academic subjects. Whilst I appreciate that things can change at secondary, her primary have made it very clear that they consider her to be exceptionally able. My own schooling was very heavily set, with sets for almost everything and quite finely graded with 12 levels for maths. This meant that we progressed very fast and I've always thought that helped me go from my very average comp to a 1st at Cambridge. I'm pretty concerned that she'll be disadvantaged if she goes to this school. I asked the teacher about the top students and they essentially said that there were issues for the top group and they appreciated our concerns.

Does anyone have any experience of this? At the moment we are feeling that it would be the wrong decision for her.

Thanks!

Mixed ability classes will not work unless you have extremely good behaviour already across the school and fantastic teachers. I suspect in schools where it seems to be working, behaviour was already good.
I agree on thr behaviour factor.
I run a tight ship in my classroom and have had no issues with MA teaching.

I have known colleagues who let more slide and they have had more issues.

But, that is also amplified with setting.

E.g. if you get a top set or a higher set you will tend to have the students who behave better.
If you have a lower set you get a disproportionate amount of children aho don't behave, which is how you get sink groups.

There are pros and cons to both.

Both systems rely on having strong teachers with firm behaviour management to be successful.

Every class will have a mix of abilities

While this is true, sets have a much narrower mix of abilities making it much easier to pitch the main input. You’re not going to have the weakest and the brightest student in the same class.

@Maisypops - clearly you think you know what I want, but don't.
What I think is a school is made up of a series of unique students and that any grouping will involve compromises. What we are debating on this thread (or at least I thought we were debating on this thread) is whether it's better to have mixed ability classes or sets ie where to make the compromises.

And whether
It is conceit though to pretend you are teaching a particular child when at that moment they are explaining to another child what you've just said but the other child didn't understand.

I teach in a primary that did set for Maths and now doesn't. Our teaching approaches have changed (adoption of a Mastery approach, but ensuring a really deep challenge within that for very able children - ie challenge within a concept rather than by acceleration onto new material), and so for the first few years planning has been quite onerous.

Our results have improved. This has been for those children who would previously been in lower sets, carefully coached in a smaller group at a slower pace, children in the middle, AND for the most able.

Finding challenge within a concept can be really tricky. It can be easiest in arithmetic - long multiplication fluency calculations for the majority, missing digit or letters-as-digits challenges for the more able - but we are getting increasingly good at it across the curriculum. The 'year group based' primary curriculum has really helped us in taking this path, and it is working well.

You might well have thought 'these children can't be combined in a single set'.

I very rarely use peer coaching BUT I very highly value the ability to explain a concept as well as do it. Some of my higher ability pupils REALLY struggle with explanations, as it doesn't match their belief of what 'being good at maths' looks like.

See noble
When I've been mixed ability the groups were mixed ability but carefully selected so the very top and very bottom students in the year generally wouldn't end up in the same group (unless it was unavoidable lile my 5 levels in one class, but then they allocated teachers to that class carefully).

Most of the year would be clustered eg l4-6/5-7 anyway which is reasonable and comparable with the range in a primary class. Then one class may gain yhr ones just below and anothet couple of grouos would gain the top.

I think MA is more of an issue if you have a cohort with 2 big tail ends at the top/bottom.

It is conceit though to pretend you are teaching a particular child when at that moment they are explaining to another child what you've just said but the other child didn't understand
That IS a teaching strategy.
It's not good to use more able children as substitutes for TAs. It is not good to have them helping other children every lesson.
BUT, peer tutoring IS a valuable teaching strategy whether you choose to believe it or not.

I've already said that sets, mixed ability and something in the middle can all work well and in my experience there is no difference to outcomes in terms of progress from starting points.

I'm not some massive activist for Mixed Ability teaching but I will speak up when people are spouting nonsense about a grouping method/ teaching strategy they clearly have limited knowledge about.

I appreciate, by the way, that the fully unset approach appropriate for a year group curriculum in primary is NOT the same as being unset right to GCSE (X-posted).
However, I do think that the setting structure could very easily be 'collapsed' to an absolute maximum of 4 levels, even at GCSE:

• A single top set
• A lot of parallel sets also taking Higher
• A lot of parallel sets taking foundation
• A very small SEN set who may not access GCSE Maths at all and whose targets may relate to functional Maths

Up to Year 9, a top set, a large number of middle sets and an SEN set would be sifficient.

Given the bell curve of ability, the vast majority of students will sit in that 'middle section', which actually covers quite a small range of ability. the top set and the SEN group would then deal with the 'outliers', who each span a range of ability at least equal to the whole middle section (though in practice the SEN range is truncated by the existence of special schools)

This image provides evidence of the things that work to create progress. Oddly, setting comes out as making little difference, and is low cost.

Not arguing one way or the other but evidence is the only way forward in classrooms, not anecdotal evidence about kids who are always, on Mumsnet, high ability.

It's true that being able to verbalise a concept in maths is an extremely valuable skill,. Ditto marking another child's English work and being able to identify www and ebi.
However, when an individual child experiences several hours per week of P2P coaching and doesn't have the teacher actually look at their work for 11 weeks in a 12 week term, then there is a problem.

Mastery sounds great and I bet it works really well for those who previously learned new things without having mastered the old stuff. However Mastery with a capital M is not so great for those who pick things up faster.

Maisy, i think you and I are saying something very similar - that there is no point about splitting those in the 'average' range into a large number of very slightly different hierarchical sets, because the range of ability within thee overall cohort is not actually that large.

However, a couple of single class sets - one very high, one very low - can complement a large number of parallel 'middle' sets well.

carefully selected so the very top and very bottom students in the year generally wouldn't end up in the same group

That would make things easier but in my school we have a top set of 32 who will get 8s and 9s and a bottom set of 10 who will get up to 1s and 2s and take entry level qualifications. I can’t see how that spread could be avoided when there are only 9 groups.

mmzz,

I agree that in some schools, Mastery is implemented in a way that doesn't challenge the most able. We have a cohort skewed to the more able, so this was something we were VERY careful about.

Have a look, for example, at nrich, or books by MC Emmett, or any of the range of books that look at 'mathematical challenge': a lot of the underpinning maths is simple, but it doesn't mean that the problem is simple to solve.

This one, for example, is simply the formal method of short multiplication - but if my lesson om Monday was on short multiplication and some of the class were still at the stage of practising the algorithm, the more able would still find that problem, and the 4 or 5 related ones I might give them, challenging.

cantkeepawayforever
I think we are.

You speak a lot of sense.

Even a few high/mid (9-6) and a few lowrr mid (4-6) and a lower group for people who struggle to access GCSE would work well.

What always interests me is that it's almost always the parents of higher ability students who spend a disproportionate time being annoyed at groups.

At one school I taught at there were more children with the same high targets so we had 3 groups all with the same targets, all doing the same course, all able to get full marks. Some parents actually called up to complain about the number on their child's timetable! No amount of pointing out the 3 classes were the same was good enough. Thry wanted their child to have a 1 on their timetable.
Made me laugh in the end when some of my low set students got As and As by sheer hard work and the children who had been told by home they were entitled to an A didn't

MrsKnightley as I said upthread, the EEF data mainly comes from the US, where children repeat classes that they failed (don’t they have AP classes too?) As their school system is so different to ours, we really shouldn’t be using their evidence to advise changes within our system.

Noble

In that situation we wpuld have the 1s/2s and some of the 3s in an intervention group whi would usually not do a language or take one fewer option.
Then 3/4-9 in main groups but you'd get a class sort of 3/4-6 and another 5-9 if that makes sense. So they'd still be mixed ability but no single class would have both tail ends.

They have done some research in Scotland and I went to a presentation in which they were cited this week. The large classes thing is interesting, however (as an aside) in that the data shows small class sizes makes little difference BUT there is other evidence that it does as long as teaching methodology is altered to make the most of it. If you are all "chalk and talk" then it makes no difference. However, if you can use it as a chance to offer more feedback (other end of the graph) then it does.

And feedback is interesting. A class in synch on a single topic / essay / whatever are likely to need similar feedback, thus meaning it can be done from the front, largely. A class at different levels (like my own, as I say, tiny school ,whole year group) means lots and lots of one-to-one and relies on good behaviour (or behaviour management) to make that happen.

Fascinating subject.

I think that there is a difference between

• 'fully granular setting': the whole year group ranked in exam result / target grade order and then split into strictly hierarchical groups numbered 1-8 and

• 'somewhat restricted range' ability grouping: the year group ordered into a smaller number of larger groups, and then parallel mixed classes within each group. his could either be a small top and bottom and a very large middle (1 top set, 1 lower, 7 middle) or equal sizes 93 top, 3 middle, 3 lower) depending on the subject and the specific exam - Maths is the only one left with tiers.

A lot of parallel sets taking foundation

There is the assumption there that every foundation student is taught all the foundation content (and every higher student is taught all the higher content). This doesn’t actually happen in practice.
For example, I taught the top foundation group last year. I taught them everything on foundation, which included trigonometry (thanks Gove). The groups below did not get taught trigonometry and spent that time (probably a month over 2 years) concentrating on other topics.
What would be the point in a student who is about a grade 3 being taught trigonometry when they could be spending that time focusing on numeracy or other weak areas to try to get them to a 4?
And if the suggestion is to take the ones who would handle it and teach them trig, then you are grouping by ability but in a more inconvenient way.

you'd get a class sort of 3/4-6 and another 5-9

So you’re saying you actually group by ability?

I went to a comprehensive in the 1970s where some subjects such as History were not setted. This did not prevent me achieving top GCSE grades but it did mean that I was constantly bored, completely unengaged with these subjects and had no interest in pursuing them to 6th form.

can't
My personal preference is the 'somewhat restricted range' set up for my subject.
Whilst not perfect, it does offer many of the pros for MA and setting.

Other subjects may be different (i know a lot of maths and MFL colleagues say setting works best in their subjects).

noblegiraffe
In that school they were largely mixed ability. Most of the cohort cluster in the middle and then the tail ends were assigned so you didn't get old level 8 and old level 3 in one group.

Most.schools i've been in even when they have mixed teaching groups have a different pathway for those who will struggle to access GCSE E.G. days off site, provision witj local charities, extra literacy and numeracy, work skills courses.

They have done some research in Scotland

I think teachers need to be very careful if they think that ‘done some research’ actually means quality or meaningful evidence. Like assuming that evidence from the US applies to the UK, or that we should pay attention to Jo Boaler.

I can't cite my source but I have a Masters in Education and it is pretty impeccable. The person who was discussing it was using it as a way of showing that the government's priorities for Scottish Education are not research based as they are valuing things that don't make much difference.

And Scottish education is very different. For a start, pupil are entered at different levels, the lower ones needing no exams (which many oppose) and you progress through 1 year long courses. This allows for quite a lot of flexibility. It is a skills based curriculum (which is also controversial and I largely oppose) so the first three years have to offer a common curriculum which is having a dire effect on standards, but hey, they have ticked all the boxes.

So, in a sense, however mixed it is in S1-3 it has to be set on a subject, by subject basis for the last 3 years of school.

Additionally, I am not using the graph to argue for anything, merely suggesting the importance of research rather than anecdote. I have a lot of dull references but, for the purposes of this thread I though a hastily googled graphic (not the exact one I was given) would do.

Noble,
Just for clarity: is there high quality England-based peer-reviewed research evidence that setting DOES work (for Maths, and then for subjects other than Maths)?

Or is part of the issue that there is no quality research for either side of the argument, but that custome-and-practice is mostly setting, and that relatively poor research is being used to justify a move away from custom-and-practice?