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?

I am very torn on this subject. Instinctively, I feel that mixed ability classes are probably better for the majority of children. I don't like labelling of any kind, and telling a child which set they are in instantly creates a label which may impact on motivation, self-perception, confidence etc.

At the same time, I remember being desperately bored in mixed ability classes when I was at secondary school. Sometimes we went painfully slow, and that too had the potential to impact on motivation and engagement etc.

My dd was set half way through year 7 for all subjects, including art, music, PE and drama. She is in top sets for everything except PE. She infinitely prefers being set for everything, including PE. However she was surprised to find that there is still a huge range of ability even within the top sets - even in maths where there are seven different groups! So I guess that mixed ability teaching is a thing even in schools where setting is the norm, it's just that the range is slightly narrower.

In light of this, I do wonder if setting could lead to less effective differentiation in some schools, because the kids are already set according to ability and the assumption is therefore that the pupils in any particular set are therefore working at a similar level of ability to one another. Perhaps in a truly mixed ability class, the teachers would be able to respond more to individual differences. However, that would presumably require a lot of extra work from the teacher.

Like I said, I'm torn. DD certainly prefers to be set, but I'm not convinced that she is necessarily stretched any more as a result of being set than she was in a mixed ability primary school class. As others have said, it could be the impact of behavioural issues as much as anything else. It's interesting to hear what teachers think.

My teacher friends think they work well for less able pupils but not the high achievers
Dd is very academic and a friend who works at our catchment Secondary ( who is generally very positive about the school) said it wasn’t an ideal match for dd

So I guess that mixed ability teaching is a thing even in schools where setting is the norm, it's just that the range is slightly narrower.
I agree. There's always a range within classes, including sets.

Some schools also have disproportionately high intakes where 50% of the cohort were greater depth studentsat ks2 and sets 1-3 are all full of grade 7-9 students so it makes zero sense setting when you could have 3 broadly 7-9 classes.

Personally, I like loose grouping so you don't get outliers at either end in the sane class but there's some mix.

cantkeepawayforever

I think you are getting very confused because I said I would want X as a parent. Wanting doesn't mean getting. Obviously I would want my child to be in a situation where he or she was educated with clever, well-behaved children all the time, even if he or she was much less bright or able than they were. I would want them to be educated by a polymath private tutor with thirty years experience if I could get away with it! But it isn't happening. So, on average, I would be happier with a setting system if I had a bright child with a "non-spiky" academic profile, and I would be happier with a mixed ability system if I had a less able child. That's all I am saying, and I don't quite get why this has attracted your interrogative posts, to be honest.

DD was in the top set at primary for everything but used to get stressed over the constant restreaming. Now she is going to a selective where there are no sets. Less stress...until GCSE at least

Pengggwyn,

I;'m just surprised when a professional - in this case a teacher - states that she wants something different for her own child than she advocates in their professional capacity for the children of others.

I suppose that the problem I see with that kind of dichotomy is that a general parent would see that you were speaking with 'teacher authority / expertise' on a matter of education policy whereas actually you are just talking as a parent who would get their child the moon on a stick if they could.

French2019 I do wonder if setting could lead to less effective differentiation in some schools I think that is part of what has led to better progress and outcomes when we shifted away from Maths setting in my primary. Previously, there had been 'things we never taught bottom set', which one or two students may well have been able to handle, and 'top set doesn't need as much practice of the basics' whereas many children in that set did benefit from covering the basics well and revisiting them regularly. Non-setting has meant differentiating on a child by child, day by day basis which has often meant turning the 'established pecking order' upside down, rather than a 'this is bottom set, all they will manage is this' mental categorisation.

It can work if the teachers are very good.

It isn't great for the high ability students imo but good overall.

cantkeepawayforever

But I clearly stated that. Obviously, as a professional - and, in fact, as a person with a basically functioning brain - I recognise that different children have different needs, and that the same system that works for Child A isn't necessarily the best for Child B.

But I only have Child A to worry about from a personal perspective, so, as a parent, there is no conflict. It is only as a teacher that I have to balance competing interests in that particular way, isn't it?

Personally i prefer the diamond approaching
one top set
lots of middle sets
one small support set

there has actually been research done into this, as opposed to just opinion.
The research says that mixed ability teaching overall is BETTER, and gets higher results for ALL the children in the class. (I assume that is assumes decent teachers)

except for the top 10%
for those kids, it produces poorer results.
as mine are in the top 10%, they go to the grammar school.

Interestingly though, it is not clear whether if you remove the top 10%, whether or not the next 10%, who now become the top 10% now suffer as well. In other words, is it comparative, so the top layer, whatever their level, or is it absolute, so the top 10% of the wider cohort.

Most research has been done in other countries which is an issue as school systems are different.

steppemum

I know research has been done. It is, at least in part, how I formed an opinion.

and if i was in charge of the setting strategy i'd split boys and girls in the bottom group, so have a boys class and a girls class.

The thing is, in a comprehensive system, what i believe should happen is that what works for 90% should drive your overall policy, and then the possible disadvantage for the 10% should be what the school strives its utmost to mitigate.

I suppose my question is this: is the disadvantage to the 10% 'inevitable'? Or is it avoidable in the best mixed ability teaching - is there school to school variation even with cohorts of matched ability, so could the school system learn to make what works for the 90% work for 95%? 98%?

From a parental perspective, surely it depends if you think you have bright kids or not ....

The previous posts indicate that all but the top 10% benefit

I wouldn't have (and didn't) stick my kids in a mixed ability class. They are bright kids. They would have got bored and fed up and demotivated. It doesn't take much to turn even a G&T child off education. I absolutely was not going to do that and it was the primary reason why I did not send my children to be state educated.

Setting is better. One problem can be less able students with good social skills who can control the class dynamics. Another can be that as the work progresses, disruptive pupils can make it harder for the teacher. They work well in the early secondary years in certain subjects in my experience, but setting is needed after that.

cantkeepawayforever

I'm not sure, to be honest. Personally, I would say not. I think the very brightest students will always be disadvantaged by the lack of pace associated with learning with children who simply have less cognitive 'power' - they take longer to grasp concepts. This will lead, inevitably, to a slower pace of learning than the brightest could cope with.

But I could be wrong.

Some comprehensive schools cannot maintain the 1:2:1 ability ratio due to intake

But if, say, the school has enough children doing a particular language for GCSE to do 3 sets, is it right for the school to set them?

If only the top 10% will really benefit, then that is 9 students - 21 in the 'top' set and the other 60 don't.

The pace of learning even in the top set is likely to be too slow for the very brightest, who will do 2 or 3 languages, and those 9 can't be put in a set of their own. So the 10% dobn't really get much benefit, and 60-81 get a disbenefit.

What is right for the school to do?

It might be different in Maths, where the top 10% of a cohort of 300 is 30, a single set, but for GCSE options subjects?

cantkeepawayforever

Personally, I would say the 'right' thing to do here is to do what is fair and seems to offer the best outcomes for more students: mixed ability. At least everyone is in the same boat - same chance of a strong or weak teacher, same chance of their learning being disrupted by the less engaged, same loss of time when the teacher needs to support the least able.

(As I say, DC's comprehensive don't set for options subjects at all - beyond a minor adjustment which sees most doing 2 languages in a particular group because of the timetable blocks - and get excellent results, possibly because of the motivation that comes from having chosen a subject. That might support a previous poster's thought that some of the advantages iof setting are due to motivation / engagement - and thus may not be needed in subjects which students actively choose.)

The more of this thread that I am reading the more I am convinced I made the right decision

Dear oh lord are there really state schools out there that only do the double award for sciences? Does that really happen? Do you have any idea how much disadvantage you've built in for G&T science kids?

Theseare,

I did do some research on this, looking at destinations and A-level results for schools which only offer double, and schools with similar cohorts which offer both double and triple.

Contrary to my expectations (I as looking for data to support a particular campaign), double award-only schools had statistically identical A-level results to double / triple schools - ie A level taught from the basis of double within the sachool which only taught double had no impact on final results (and this will be even more the case now double is so much expanded) vs A level taught from the basis of triple in schools where that was the norm.

What IS a disadvantage is where a child moves from a double-offering school to a school which teaches A-level from an assumption of triple.

I equally rang my old Oxbridge college - who said that pretty much exactly half their scientists / medics / engineers did double at GCSE.

I was surprised. It wasn't the data I wanted at the time, but I put it out there for information...

It is definitely worth cross-checking curriculum coverage between new double GCSE, old triple GCSE, triple iGCSE (still used by some private schools) from different boards. It's less clear cut than you might think.

That's interesting cant but I'd like to see the sample sizes in order to understand the validity of the observation you have made. Because what you have just stated is not logical. Why should there be a disadvantage in terms of outcome where a child moves from a double-offering school to a school which teaches A-level from an assumption of triple? If there were no disadvantage in the double then this could not arise.

Maybe there is a difference in terms of the ability of the kids in the study?

Interesting what you say about the intake to your college but again this might be distorted in terms of the subjects studied. DS has an offer from Cambridge to read natural sciences and AFAIK most kids in his entry cohort did the triple.