Any teachers here? Do mixed ability classes work?

[SpoonsAndForks]

I need to hurry up and decide whether my DS takes up his state school place for September or stays on at his private school.

His state school has mixed ability classes for all subjects apart from maths and English.

I'd like to know (especially from teachers) how this works with 32 children of very different ability. Is it really possible to differentiate and offer the right amount of challenge for each child?

How does it work in language classes where some children have already had 2 years lessons on the language and others are beginners?

Do the more academic kids suffer and end up not reaching their full potential or can they still fly academically?

lock not sure how many you know then! My DH works in a selective school which teaches in whole classes at primary until year 5 and then doesn't set for English or most option subjects throughout the secondary school. Highly successful day school.

The girls' school in oour town only sets at 11+ and again not in all subjects and the boys' day/boarding school only sets (apart from maths) at 13+ and only ina handful of subjects. No streaming in any of these schools.

I guess they don't feel a huge need to stream/ set when they have small class sizes in the option subjects and students have a narrow ability range.

One common thing throughout this thread is doesn’t matter how MA pro the school is, Maths is always setted. Why is that?

I suspect you know why, GHGN. It's because maths is presented as a series of problems to solve, requiring different skills and asking a teacher to have 20 different ability ranges all continually doing different work which is set at a challenging level for each of them would be impossible for any human being to achieve.

It seems to me that people have no problems teaching MA in Humanities subjects but not so much in Maths or Sciences.
So does that mean the question the op should be asking is “Do mixed abilities classes work in Humanities subjects?”

I would say that mixed ability can work really well, but setting is more forgiving of bad teaching - there is often an assumption that all children in a set are at the same level, and teaching is often aimed at the middle of the group, with very little differentiation - but of course, in reality all classes are mixed ability, and many children in sets are disadvantaged in various ways - low expectations of those in lower sets, high pressure competitive environment in top sets, difficulty of moving up because you may not have covered the material that those in a higher set have, meaning that students can effectively have doors closed to them in year 7, regardless of what happens after that. The reality in many schools is that setting is primarily about appeasing m/c parents, and in often amounts to segregation by social class and / or behaviour (I have researched this, and seen countless of examples of schools going to ridiculous lengths to ensure that the children of the most 'persuasive' parents are in top sets and effectively segregated from the 'rougher' students. Awareness of pecking orders is heightened; those in lower sets know that they are less valued by the school, and those in higher sets believe themselves to be better (and are often told so by teachers).
Done well, mixed ability teaching can genuinely cater to the needs of all (including the highest attaining), and give students the chance to develop at their own rate with less focus all round on who is best / worst.

One common thing throughout this thread is doesn’t matter how MA pro the school is, Maths is always setted. Why is that?

I think this is starting to shift - although mixed ability maths classes at secondary school are rare, I know of a number of schools that have recently moved towards m/ab in maths. And if you go back 20 or 30 years, it was a lot more common than it is today.
In recent decades governments and Ofsted have put a lot of pressure on schools to set, and those that have resisted have found themselves ploughing an increasingly lonely furrow. However, in this world of International comparisons and countries striving to be among the 'best', we are looking to emulate the most successful countries, which typically involves adopting approved used in East Asian countries.... Of course, it is those elements of the E Asian approach that align most closely with the beliefs of those driving the policy that are the ones being pushed, but surely there's only so long that the Shanghai / Singapore method can be peddled as the solution to all our problems, before people start noticing that mixed ability grouping is standard in these places. Indeed, Finland, which is also up there amongst the highest performing countries, had an education system very different from those in E Asian countries, but the common denominator is mixed ability teaching.

Adopting approved used? Methods used

Another common denominator between Finland and Singapore is traditional teaching methods. Teaching in Finland has for years been quite traditional: textbook-led, plenty of teacher talk, whole class discussions led by the teacher, children working quietly on their own, desks facing the front from age 7, very little "group work".

Cognitive psychologists of learning like Dan Willingham argue that such more explicit teaching methods are key to improving the achievement of lower-attaining cohorts, for reasons to do with e.g. working memory limitations and less advantaged children needing more efficient learning techniques to enable them to catch up with what their advantaged peers have gained from home. It's possible that this is one reason why Finland has been successful with mixed ability classes.

These traditional methods are the opposite to what teacher training institutions in this country, and (until recently) Ofsted have been pushing, and to what goes on in a great many of our schools. A number of teachers are arguing for a more traditional teaching approach to become common here, but their voices are still in the minority.

DD has recently left a fantastic state school. Mixed ability classes have hopefully worked for her, but I will know for sure in a couple of weeks. She was put in sets for maths, English, MFL and sciences. The science sets determined who would take triple & double science, whereas MFL still has higher & foundation papers.

Her remaining subjects of history, geography and RS were in mixed ability classes. This meant she actually received more tailored attention in these as the teachers had to focus on individual targets rather than the blanket approach. Her teachers were great and really knew how to enthuse her. She's predicted top grades and these are unlikely to be jeopardised through sharing a class with less able students, only through the general lack of certainty about the examiner's approach to the new style GCSEs and minimal sample papers.