DD1 not moving to Set 1 :(

[blackeyes72]

DD1's one strong subject has always been maths - she struggles with English and all literary based subjects but maths since very young she has always been in set 1/top of the class in most schools she has moved to.

This year she was moved to set 2, the teacher said this was because in one of her assessments she didn't do as well, which was fine by me. DD1 worked hard and got 88 per cent in her end of year assessment which thy marked as borderline 8/9.

Today she came home really upset as she was told that she is NOT moving to set 1. Apparently set 1 had a "not great teacher" so even though some children got 70% or below they are staying put. I would rather the whole set thing was scrapped than her not understanding why she is being kept down in her one strong subject.

Seems terribly unfair to me! I have written to the teacher, but I know I will get fobbed off, so just venting.....I really hate this system!!!

It depends how the sets work surely? DS is in Set 3 for maths despite being predicted a Level 8 at GCSE, and achieved more highly than many of Set 1 in his end of year exams. I've asked if he can move up, but the school want to leave him where he is - he is doing well with the teacher (did not get on at all with previous teacher), he has issues with self confidence (being top of a lower set is good for him) and most crucially - Set 3 will cover all the same material as Set 1 including Level 9 material. Teacher said (nicely) that parents get so hung up on Set labels - the most important thing is that your child is in a place to achieve their potential.

(PS DS is in a school which doesn't set for anything, but they've found this not workable for maths - the only subject that does)

If the teacher for the top set isn't good, that's a very valid consideration, particularly if your child has other issues which a poor teacher may not cater for. My DS struggled with maths in the second of three sets where he was taught by someone who seemed to have no understanding of why anyone might find it difficult. Ultimately he was put down to the bottom set where he was taught by a brilliant teacher who was prepared to do whatever it took to get maths into his pupils' heads. DS started understanding what he was doing and actually enjoying it, to the extent that the school wanted to put him up again as his marks were improving so much. We begged them not to, and happily they agreed to leave him where he was. He ended up with a B in GCSEs.

In many ways being comfortable working at the top of set 2 with a good teacher is a good place to be

This

I take all your comments on board thank you, all incredibly useful.

I will ask what does she need to do, then this will give her something to aim for.

She moved schools 3 times since reception, so not too bad. She does have glasses for visual stress and coloured paper..

Ultimately like others said, being in set 2 is not a barrier to doing really well if she wants to, but it would be useful to understand that. It would have been better if they had the same teacher as she was very good, but unfortunately they are changing teachers too!!!

It's not a big deal in the big scheme of things, but it is still objectively strange for a child to be told they are an 8/9 but not good enough for set 1... They must have 20+ children at level 9, which I don't believe for a second. It will be more the case of not wanting to.move children once they are set....

Ps I also really agree with the comments about teachers, unfortunately they change teacher every year

Be aware that lower sets may not cover the whole of the syllabus. If your dd remains in set 2, she should get a CGP or Letts revision book and make sure she covers the syllabus at home if she wants the top grade. Khan academy has some good videos for explaining the difficult bits,

One problem you may get is that your dd thinks she cannot do maths because she has been put in set 2. Maths depends a lot on practise. If she plods through it a home, she will succeed.

They must have 20+ children at level 9, which I don't believe for a second. It will be more the case of not wanting to.move children once they are set....

Not sure why you don’t believe this, I’m a teacher and it happens regularly that there are more children than can fit in one set, so they have to pick off the top 30. I’m not really sure why you’re asking for opinions from people as you clearly don’t want to believe that there are other children who may have a higher ability than your child.

In my opinion it is almost always better to be top of a lower set than mediocre in a higher set. Setting shouldn't be seen as a competitive scene. The teachers have straight forward reasons ie marks to decide it all on as well as softer reasons such as personality of the pupils. If her teacher can guarantee that progress will not be hampered by being in a class with children with lower targets than your daughter ( judging on the 8/9 so far this seems to hold) then I wouldn't , myself , be worried and I would reassure my DD. I have been a parent of school age children for 22 years so far and at every school and stage the maths sets have become top heavy with children being moved 'up 'and no none coming down. This means the lower sets have more teacher time and as long as the teacher is equally good and there aren't many disruptive pupils , this is a benefit.i haven't ( purely unscientific anecdote) seen the lower sets marks being negatively affected and I have seen kids in the higher groups not doing as well.

My daughter's in Set 3 for English but is still being predicted a GCSE 7/8. I can see her work is improving rapidly as well. So unless the teacher decides to move her there would seem little point in doing so for the sake of it.

Is your daughter happy with the teacher in Set 2? Is she finding the pace of work too slow? If neither of these apply then there doesn't seem any particularly good reason to move her.

In my school there’s 90 in set 1. So it’s entirely possible to have 30 in set 1!

Two of my DC started year 10 in set 3 - both got A's very close to an A star in Maths. One was moved up to set 2 and offered set 1 6 months before the exam (and stayed put as saw a change of teacher would just be disruptive). The other was kept in 3 and offered 2 with 6 months to the exam - stayed for similar reasons.
Admittedly the second one had a tutor.

But I've also taught in a school where set 3 struggle to pass GCSE. So just the number doesn't tell you anything (my DCs school has 6 sets, well 12 but 6 in each half of the year). But sometimes the better teacher teaches set 2.

There will usually be an overlap in sets. And they will consider the children carefully who are at the boundary.
For some children, they're better being at the bottom end, because they see the ones doing better and they work hard to get up there. put them at the top of the second set, and they think initially "ha! I can do this without trying" and then sink to the middle of the second set.
Other children are better at the top of the second set. They lack confidence and when they see children doing it easier and quicker without really trying then they feel there's no point trying. Being at the top end gives them confidence to try things that they wouldn't even look at.

Now there's also other things that effect movement. Firstly as people have said, the top set may have covered things that her set won't. My dd1, as another person said, did statistics GCSE early and then went on to do Additional maths. Some of the second set did score 9s in their GCSE and a few of the top set got 8s, but they still couldn't have swapped them easily.
You may find that although in that paper she got a better score-it may also have been a different paper-that generally those children are quicker at understanding a concept than she is.
Another thing is that ime top sets are often bigger than the lower down ones. Dd1's had I think 37 in it. If anything they'd have been looking for a couple to drop down and not to replace them.
They started on 34 but had children join who had to go into the top set, which was why they ended up with that number.

You also do have to consider that it may be her best subject, but that still doesn't mean that she's in the top 30. For example, tennis is my best sport by a long way: I'm still many leagues away from being asked to play at Wimbledon.

Don't make it a bigger thing for your dd than it needs to be. She's on for an 8/9. Brilliant! Tell her that! She's unlikely to not get it because she's not in the top set if they're predicting that. They should be pushing her to her ability whatever set she's in.

DD1 had a friend whose dm was very focussed on which maths set she was in. Every term her dd was in tears that she wasn't going up because she was convinced she should be. I know because I'd worked with her at one point that she was where she should be (not that I told the mum). If her dm hadn't been so focused on going up, she'd have had much more confidence in maths. Because her dm saw it as a failure then she saw herself as failing.

Update - I managed to speak to the head of maths and all has been clarified. They took an average across 3 assessments - beginning, middle and end of year. Dd1 scored a bit lower in the first one (summer brain 😁) so she got a slightly lower average than 88 per cent which meant she missed out on set 1 by 1 per cent. This puts her at the top of the group but the message now for dd1 is clear.. If she really wants to get to that set 1 she needs to work consistently throughout.

I think that's pretty fair.

ta 4 update

I would try to relax about it blackeyes, I have a DD moving up to yr 8 and I have no idea what set she will be in for anything and I am not at all concerned, perhaps I am unusual.

For me, if school is enjoyable and DD show enthusiasm/does homework and loves school that is far more important.

I had a call from a teacher after DD was really upset with the mark from one exam and I said that I wasn't concerned. The teacher wanted to stress that DD had worked incredibly hard all year and the end of year test result didn't reflect her work, just that she missed a question and didn't read another one properly, hence lost marks, but that the whole point of the tests was to get them used to doing tests under exam conditions.

Maybe I am too relaxed but relaxed I am! I really don't think it matters that much in Yr 7.

I’m a Head of Dept in a core subject. I am always reviewing sets as I feel it’s important that pupils are placed in the correct class. However, this does seem to cause a lot of issues with some parents rather than the child. If your child is doing well in set two then I think you should be pleased with that. What will matter is the GCSE grade she gets. Nobody will bat an eyelid or think about which set she was in. I honestly feel that parents need to have more faith in the teacher’s decision. We know the child as a learner better than they do in our subject area.

I honestly feel that parents need to have more faith in the teacher’s decision

Yup - that is entirely where I come from. Professional people doing their job week in week out are far better placed than I am to assess my daughter than I am.

I don't give a fig about sets tbh!

Oops - than I am - on phone without specs!

It's not a big deal in the big scheme of things, but it is still objectively strange for a child to be told they are an 8/9 but not good enough for set 1..

That's not strange at all. Most kids in the top 1-3 sets get an 8/9 at GCSE Maths. However the top 1-2 sets also sit FSMQ Add Maths in Year 11 in addition to the GCSE (and lots do very well).

I think you need to trust the teachers more!

but it is still objectively strange for a child to be told they are an 8/9 but not good enough for set 1...
Dd1 was at a standard comprehensive last year. The top set all got 8/9s and about three quarters of the second set. So there would have been several children in the same position as your dd. They were very pleased with the maths results.

The top set also did statistics in year 10 and about 3/4 did Additional maths on top of the GCSE.

Your DD’s innate ability and interest in maths is still there. Nothing fundamental has changed just because she isn’t moving to the first set.

I’m glad that you’ve been able to find out that she almost made it. It means that moving up in the future is a realistic goal if that’s important to her.

If the school gives the top set the chance to do Further Maths in the GCSE years, for example, or if there are other enrichment activities only available to the top set, I can see that it’s not just about the kudos of being in the ‘premier division’. It doesn’t sound as if the end of Y9 would be too late for moving up from a practical perspective in your DD’s school, though the end of Y10 might be, and certainly would be at my DS’s school.

Your DD did very well in the most recent exam and her teacher clearly thinks she has an aptitude for maths. If she wants to do even better, it might be helpful to find out if she is losing marks because of gaps in her knowledge, silly slips in questions she knows how to do in principle or if she runs out of time.

I do feel for you and your DD. My DS ended up doing Y9 in the second set having always been in top sets and it gave me a pang, I’ll admit, because, like your DD, he’d struggled a bit with essay-based topics and maths had always been his thing. (Luckily he wasn’t too bothered himself!) He was ‘demoted’ with a handful of others, most of whom did very well being at the top end of the second set and actually better than the majority of those in the top set in the Y9 end of year exam - most made it back into the top set. Going into the second set doesn’t have to be a one way ticket.

You mention that your DD has some learning differences. One of the ‘demoted’ boys in my DS’s class was eventually given extra time in exams so he could do himself justice. If you think your DD might qualify for more time in exams, this might be an avenue worth pursuing, especially with GCSEs on the horizon.

I don’t think it’s that unusual for innate ability to be obscured by learning differences when it comes to timed tests. My favourite classroom underachiever is Roger Penrose, the theoretical physicist. When he was in primary school, he was put down a class because he was slow on timed arithmetic tests. Later on, a teacher recognised he had potential, allowed him more time and he did well.

You can read about his early experiences towards the end of this interview if you are interested.

I hope your DD will continue to enjoy maths next year and tell her not to lose heart! She doesn’t have to be the best at maths exams. She only needs to play the game to the extent that she does well enough to ensure any avenues she wishes to go down remain open to her.

Did her school do UKMT? Might be a way for her to stretch and show her skills.

I was in set two for maths in year 10 (after having a teacher in year 9 who's teaching just didn't click with me at all)

I was top of the set the entire year and consistently had the highest marks so in year 11 I was put back into set 1 with a different teacher.

Sets 1-3 all did the same material and sat the same paper. But without my excellent (for me) set 2 teacher I was getting b's and c's whereas before it was all a*s.

So I begged and I pleaded to go back down a set, they said no, big fish little pond etc.

It took a friend of mine in Sixth form to basically tutor me in about 60% of what we had been taught because I just didn't get it.
They helped me get an a, but without them I probably would have got a c.

Sometimes a set down is actually slightly better!

How can they possibly be grading her an 8/9 during Year 8? Those grades are for GCSEs at the end of Year 11?

The school will have placed her in the best set to meet her needs - they want everyone to do their best. Far better being at the top of set 2 than the bottom of set 1.