Setting for Maths in Year 7

[lucyanntrevelyan]

Can anyone tell me if their DC school does not set for any subjects even Maths at Year 7 ? This is a change the school have made for this year which I have just discovered at Open Morning. (Previous DC at school have all been set for Maths from this point in Year 7 and for other subjects in Year 9) I am not clear if there will be setting at all for the current cohort. My DC is very able at Maths and my research has suggested that not setting for Maths is a disadvantage for higher ability children. The Maths department told me 'research suggests mixed ability is better' but didn't give me any indication which research? Can anyone /teachers enlighten me with what research this was so I can be better informed and reassured this is the best thing for my child.

But if the bac gets people to maybe just above gcse level by age 18, in uk we have maths and further maths a levels that kids get to at that age.

You mention 2 years additional preparation after bacc. But that is like saying put in more money, have smaller class sizes. I think on the continent it takes longer to do uni qualifications - something to bear in mind with huge tuition fees. Would we be willing to put in the extra money to get the same number of maths grads?

That’s not to say that if there was a pot of additional money, we shouldn’t use it to help the lowest attaining. Maybe free summer school for those who failed SATs (the earlier you intervene the better)?

If we did teach without sets then there would just be a bigger gap between private schools (where most would set pre-gcse) and state - selecting on wealth.

I love that cakes is now going on about everyone else making repeated assumptions when most of this thread is 'here's my opinion, don't tell me it's more complex, sets are evil for kids, sets are responsible for the outcomes of a norm referenced qualification, sets are terrible, more waffle about how schokls sjould gwt 90% of students over a norm referenced threshold without changing anything (but when people point out again thia doesn't work, suddenly we do need to make changes and should have used our imagination to pragmatically work out what reply they wanted. Look at my selective referencing of a different system, don't tell me there are problems in that system, oh look a selective representation of another system... and so on... Why can't you guys just get that sets are evil... pages later, you lot make assertions!'

The stupid thing is most other people are totally open to saying there are pros and cons of many grouping types. Only one person is being narrowly driven by their opinion.

Candidate numbers are simple
2017 732700 entered Bac, 643800 passed; pass rate= 87.9% (pdf page 218)

Not simple at all.

If you look at the table on page 225, the number successful laureats aged 17/18 in 2017 was 446,751 + 638 16 year olds.

Almost 30% of successful laureats (191,105) were aged 19 or over

Therefore, I am still not convinced about the translation of "in a generation".

If the beautician (possibly aged 19 or 20) only needs an average pass mark of 50% in the maths element, why does she need to answer any of the difficult maths questions?

If you scroll down to pages 228-235 of cake's pdf booklet - there are further tables for 16,17 and 18 year olds who studied for vocational diplomas - the CAP and the BEP. These appear to be similar to an NVQ1 (the CAP) and an NVQ2 (the BEP) - they are tabled in separate columns to the BAC Pro:

In 2017, 87,975 17/18 year olds studied for the CAP (plus 150 16 year olds) and 126,696 17/18 year olds studied for the BEP (plus 437 16 year old).

These must be the students taking lower qualifications mentioned by the International School in Grenoble - over 215,000 students in total - some of whom will go on to take a BAC qualification later on.

Some places have smaller class sizes for lower sets and more experienced teachers with them. This isn’t abandoning them.

Why shouldn’t kids be proud of functional skills? In some adult education places there are functional skills courses for maths (as well as gcse). The papers like look v practical and sensible.

Courses are free or low cost (like £200) - like the cost of a phone.

Maisy,

You are rambling and got lost in the maze of your own misrepresentations. Don't hide the wood behind the trees. It is not like there are positives and negatives to apples falling down and apples falling up. It is all a matter of opinion, and nuanced understanding of complexity.

In the real world apples are falling down. All advantages are for the top sets, all disadvantages are for the middle and lower sets. They are paying the price. I am talking about real children, their aspiration, the chances in life, their wellbeing.

Low skills, unemployment, MH illnesses also cost money.

The "most other people are totally open to saying there are pros and cons of many grouping types" does not bye them much.

Clavinova,

All school years since their Reception are multiple age – they start at different ages..

It is complex, but simple. Back of an envelope estimate:
Population by age group (Table 1, page 17), total adds up to 67 million.
There were 807,618 born in 1998, who could have sat Bac in 2017 at 18 years of age.

732700 divide by 807618 = 90.7% entered Bac of all born in 1998
643800 divide by 807618 = 79.7% passed Bac of all born in 1998

So it is 79% in a generation.

The BEP and CAP numbers you quote are double counting.

BEP is integrated into Bac Pro, all BEP students enter Bac if they don't have one (Page 228, line4) . It is an intermediate pre-cursor and covers the e.g. the Beautician part of the Beautician Bac Pro. The whole point of their reform is that vocational students are given the opportunity and have to stay in secondary education and enter Bac with its Maths, Language etc in addition to purely vocational content, even if they attend a FE college. (BEP is supposed to be entered at 17, not 18)

CAP is vocational for 17 yo, but also an additional qualification, adults further education.
CAP may account for the 10% who have not entered Bac.
732,700 + 87,975 = 820,675, that is 13 thousands more than the population born in 1998.
So clearly there is double counting somewhere. Maybe some CAP students also enter Bac.

This actually shows that no students are left behind without opportunities.

It is more complex because every school year in France has multiple ages, as seen in table 1 page 91, and page 103.
Because they start at different age even in their Reception (page 69, table 1 bottom).

Some students entered Bac early at 14, 15, 16, 17, and also at 19, 20 and older. It is the legacy, which they are phasing out fast (page 103). Number of repeats fallen sharply to 0.4-2,2% from 9% in 2005.

Most able can go faster. Less able can catch up, but nobody is left outside in the cold.

The real answer to what they did to improve outcomes is in primary school, at the entry, at the age of 6 and 7. They delayed entry in primary for some.

The “policy of fluidity of trajectory” reduced the falling behind in Primary school drastically, which benefited the most socially advantaged and the most disadvantaged.

Five years after starting their first primary year (CP), 91% are in year CM2 as expected,
1% skipped a year forward and are a year ahead, 7.6% are behind, 0.2% are in Special schools or 2 years behind (Page 77. Table 1).
Graph 2 shows most of the falling behind is at the age of 6 and 7 in CP, CE1.
They reduced falling behind sharply illustrated by the cohorts of 2011 vs 1997.

The percentage of children who started secondary school at expected age is 92% in 2017, a sharp increase vs 82% in 2005. Those who are 1 year ‘late’ are 7.6%, a sharp reduction from 17% in 2005. (Table 1, page 75)

The percentage of children who don’t repeat years has increased (Table 3, p 77) for children of:
Senior Managers, Professions, businessmen: from 89.8% to 96.4% (+6%)
Unqualified manual workers: from 66.6% to 86.7% (+20)
Unemployed who were never employed: from 57.6% to 75.7% (+18)
But they claim they reduced this unemployed statistic drastically by 3.5% in just one last year.

These 7.6% being 1 year behind in Primary could be dealt with good intervention, SEN or otherwise, to remove repeating all together.

Whatever it was, their new policy improved outcomes for the disadvantaged and helped the advantaged as well. The most able started primary earlier and skipped a year forward if necessary.

What actually happened it seems is that they set as it were at the entry to primary school. They keep them in early years until they reach the milestones and are ready (page 68). The most able can start early. The whole school year is a set. Table shows children starting their CP at the age of 4, 5, 6 (the nominal age) or 7 etc. (page 69, table 1 bottom, column 2,3,5). It gives numbers of children by age from 4 to 11 in Preelementary and in Elementary (=primary)). There is huge overlap starting from 4 years old, staged entry. So every school year has multiple ages up until their year 12.

The difference is made in early years and Infant school.

cakes
Nope. More finding it amusing that you are so driven by your 'my opinion is right' that you seem to be working your way through whatever tangents, assertions and selective references of other education systems you can.
Now we have this: Low skills, unemployment, MH illnesses also cost money. They do cost money, but it has nothing to do with setting (unless of course you're now going to argue that setting causes unemployment and causes mental health issues )

There are many variables affecting student outcomes. There are pros and cons to different ability groupings (which often links to other variables such as cohort, staff, subject).
If I think of schools i know, some set and some do mixed and some do loose groupings. The high performing schools have a mix of sets and mixed. The low performing schools have a mix of sets and mixed. Setting or not is not the driving factor of the different results. As said repeatedly, it's more complex than you suggest.

I teach Functional Maths in FE.
Learners often say “why wasn’t I taught this at school?”

(To be fair, they may have been, but real life practical problem solving skills can be obscured by everything else in the curriculum.)

borntobequiet
I had this this week but from a 6th form student saying 'we were never taught... at gcse'. They were and the thing they were complaining about was more y7 skills.
Retention and the ability to apply knowledge rather than regurgitate it doesn't come easily to some students.

So Shanghai has the least able doing double the amount of maths lessons each day. France adds on years of education to the least able. But cakes insists that bottom sets needing more time to do stuff and go more slowly is a failure of setting.

Maisy apart from basic, straightforward computational skills, for example finding a fraction of a quantity by dividing by the denominator and multiplying by the numerator - many learners think they have to convert the fraction to a percentage, over-complicate things and get muddled - there are problems involving scheduling, route finding, tax/pensions/expenses, which are firmly based in everyday life and which are crowded out of school curricula. That’s really what my learners mean.
There have recently been calls for financial education in schools, which might go some way to solving the problem, but not I think if it were just farmed out to anyone with gaps in their timetable (cf PSHE, Citizenship).

born
We do financial literacy from y7 to 11 but it's added into the PSHE programme. That's fine if you've got a tutor who is confident at explaining it, but less so if you have a tutor who is perfectly competent at the numeracy but can't explain it.

That and teaching mortgages to year 10 when a good 50% of them won't own their own house and home ownership is something other people do is a really tough gig to have. I dont think that was one of my finest lessons.

Yes it makes a huge difference if the tutor is confident and knows their stuff. I used to enjoy teaching PSHE and Citizenship because I’m fairly well informed anyway but I also liked finding things out.
Have realised that my last post returned to the theme of this thread: the reason many of my learners have trouble with the basics is because they have been pushed, rushed and overloaded, and not revisited the basics sufficiently. This is not the fault of the teachers, but of the curriculum. Setting ameliorates this somewhat, but not entirely.

borntobequiet
I agree.
I'm confident enough to sort my own mortgage and finances out but that's totally different to confidently explaining those concepts and principles to teens. Just like someone might be a confident reader but that's different to teaching literary analysis to GCSE.

I'm with you because some students need that consolidation (and as you've highlighted, there are other factors behind the outcomes)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3419925-Free-Financial-Education-textbooks-sent-to-secondary-schools-by-Martin-Lewis

These will be useful then.

^CAP may account for the 10% who have not entered Bac.
732,700 + 87,975 = 820,675, that is 13 thousands more than the population born in 1998^
So clearly there is double counting somewhere. Maybe some CAP students also enter Bac

100,000 young people unaccounted for here

www.thelocal.fr/20171208/why-are-so-many-french-kids-failing-at-school

The article was written in December 2017;

Every year in France 100,000 young people leave the school system with no qualifications, a new study has revealed
The study carried out by France's national council responsible for assessing the school system (CNESCO) showed that more than 10 percent of school pupils are leaving school without passing any exams

That means that they don't have their all-important baccalaureate qualification nor the French professional aptitude diploma called the CAP

@cakesandtea
I teach in an International School. We don't set until the equivalent of year 10. Yet there are gaps in knowledge and understanding in year 10 and also in year 7.

I assumed this was due to the students being of different ability. They have been taught in mixed ability classes all their lives and they are a range nationalities.

Please impart your wisdom on why there is this divide.
Just to repeat, they have always been taught in mixed ability classes.

maisy and borntobequiet
It is difficult to know when kids are ready and interested in these financial things.

It took me a while to understand the reasons for why banks gave interest to savers (I think I had to grasp inflation first). The numerical calculation for compound interest is straightforward but understanding the whole context in which it is used is harder.

Functional skills maths seems very useful. From what I have read, marking seems to be criterion as opposed to norm referenced which is a good idea. Maybe it should have more questions on fractions or compound interest, but overall it Sounds like a much better benchmark for most careers than the gcse material. I guess kids who have weaker language skills may struggle, but I hope it does get more widely used as an alternative qualification.

It is also a myth that top sets somehow accelerate progress. If they were going faster, they would be graduating from university at 18.

Or perhaps they graduate from university at 21 with stronger degrees, on average? After having gotten stronger A-levels at 18, on average.

It is also a myth that top sets somehow accelerate progress. If they were going faster, they would be graduating from university at 18.

The top sets are better prepared for A level maths. At A level setting is much rarer due to smaller class sizes. And its not typical to go to university until you have 3 A levels and are ready to leave home. And not everyone who excels in maths will study maths at degree level. So your arguement doesnt make sense.

Cakes, still think you are spot on. Haven't been through this entire thread, nor do I have the head for detail on this that you have (as I stated many pages earlier.) But your points about top-set parents skewing the system to suit their families at expense of everyone else is so true. Yes, of course there are many other factors involved in how kids turn out, but an education system wedded to setting/segregating children into academic ability groups (rather than making differentiated work available according to need in same classrooms) only compounds them.

marytuda
There isn't such thing as a 'top set family'.

Some of the most chilled out parents I've worked with have been 'top set' parents and some of the most ridiculous 'prioritise my child above all else' have come from mixed ability.

If we're going to start bringing family background into it then you start looking at trends (e.g parents with more affluent backgrounds tend to do not educationally, be more involved in their child's education etc.) There is a literacy gap from 3 years old.

There's probably more pushy parents (in a nice way) in my mixed ability groups in catchment 1 than I ever had teaching top sets in catchment too.

(Again, this is someone who has taught sets and mixed in a range of contexts and thinks grouping is complex and it's for schools to make the best decision based on their cohort, staff and subject)

It's almost getting to the point on this thread where despite endless "yeah but... here's cherry picked references" we're getting to 'ok so maybe it is more complex, but sets make it all worse because they just do'.

Put it this way (and I say this to almost every education debate when one side tends to hold entrenched positions), if there was a magic bullet that would magically solve every issue regarding pupil outcomes, surely every school on the country would be doing it.