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.

Here’s someone who might have benefited, according to some, by being in the top set and taught all those hard chapters:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a3413214-If-141-pounds-is-10-stone-1-how-come-137-pounds-is-9-stone-7?msgid=82305028#82305028

Here's my experience . I'm old. We were set for maths by our ability in English. I was put in the top set for maths but I shouldn't have been there.
I scraped a C at O'level (I'm that old). I really wish I had been in a lower set.

teach to the middle and have half the class incredibly frustrated.

So how does the rest of the world muddle through? Especially those with better outcomes internationally, the Asians, the Finns, the Belgians. UK is the only country that sets. How do they muddle through in Finland? Why in France 80% of population can pass Bac with Maths? What about Polish Matura? Are Brits exceptionally stupid?

What you do, Str1ngofhearts, is teaching to the top of the class and leaving half or, more likely two thirds, more frustrated, only it is a different half, and the consequences are totally different to the bottom third. They end up without good GCSE at all.

Everybody worries about the most able being frustrated... those poor things will be on top of the class in any set up. Why nobody worries about the middle and less able losing confidence? Why nobody worries huge chunk of average and low average DC, and those whose SEN were not met in Primary, lose their chances in life, don't get good GCSEs at all? They don't get to be taught the relevant material and you can see who that will be early in Primary. Why nobody sees a problem with that? What does it tell?

Why can't they remember timetables? Because nobody asked them to memorise. Rote learning is boooo. Homework is booo. But the rest of the world unashamedly memorises their timetables and therefore can retrieve facts to solve multiplication and division problems. Not failing on basic hurdle, they build confidence and depth of understanding.

Why can't we retain concepts? Because we jump piece meal from one topic to the other every two weeks. How do they build on the difficulty in other countries? They spend the whole year on timetables, multiplication and division, give and take. Why do all but the bottom 20% of the French get to Bac, but the Brits can't remember timetables?

The whole teaching methodology is assuming to serve the top third and to leave the bottom third behind. It was like this since 1870. Secondary education was supposed to be selective, for the most able, and it never was reformed since in terms of methodology and outcomes. It still assumes that failing the bottom 35% is fine. A natural thing.

How do they do it in Shanghai? Glad you asked, teachers have tiny teaching allocations. They teach a maths lesson, then they mark the work, then they pull back in the kids who struggled for a remedial lesson all on the same day. Then when they teach the next bit the next lesson, they start with kids who have grasped the previous lesson. The struggling kids get way more teacher input.

Teachers in England teach for 90% of the day so this is not possible here.

Any suggestion of change is met with anger, ridicule and dodging the point.
Aka people haven't agreed with me and have said my sweeping generalisations aren't grounded in facts so now I'll play the victim and make more sweeping generalisations (that people who disagree with me and my opinion aren't open to change despite clear evidence showing people accept there's issues in the system... They just don't agree with my view so obviously they are wrong).

Then for good measure in following posts I'll make more sweeping generalisations about how 'we' do things in the UK, even though there's multiple different education systems, an increasing range of school offers and no one way that things are done.

And then now more illogical claims have been pointed out again, I'm entirely prepared for more 'why cakes is a victim'.

noblegiraffe
Someone I went to uni with went out there for one of their projects. If I remember correctly, there's also standardised lesson planning and people end up teaching one course multiple times. (E.g. Year 8 algebra to all year 8s & y9 trig to all y9s rather than a mixed timetable).
I might be wrong. This was a while ago.

www.thelocal.fr/20160830/ten-ways-to-fix-the-french-school-system

Comparing other countries is a pointless exercise as there are so many other variables. We have double the poverty( which has a big impact on outcome) Finland has. Teachers there don't have to jump through Ofsted or Sats hoops and they control how they teach. They set there own assessments. Many of our teachers are even told which colour pen to use.

France doesn't look like a system I'd want to emulate. Isn't there further education system pretty woeful on top?

I'm just concluding my essay on this now and I'm quite convinced that setting should be scrapped.

From a personal perspective I feel quite strongly about this. I have a dd who is top of set 1 and a ds with dyslexia who is set 5. From primary school ds has been made to feel that he is lazy and stupid (his dyslexia wasn't picked up on until he was 9) being put in the bottom set in high has only served to entrench this idea that he is thick (he's not) Other kids call them the "set 5 retards". He is disengaged from school and says he hates school work because he's rubbish at it. If he manages to scrape a few GCSEs I'll be delighted. He is capable of doing so but psychologically he has checked out. And I can't say that I blame him. It's a perfectly natural response to being put in that position. It's incredibly damaging himself esteem and the way sets are decided are certainly not an exact science. Many bright kids end up in low sets and vice versa.

DD is at the "top" of year 8. She also hates school. She is highly anxious and a perfectionist. The amount of pressure placed on top set pupils is ridiculous. It's unhealthy and I believe it's part of the reason for the dramatic rise in mental health problems in schools. Teachers regularly say "you should know this you're set 1!" They want those top grades for their results data and don't care about the mental wellbeing of those kids. It's a pressure cooker environment and one in which girls, in particular, seem to struggle.

I would be happy if sets were scrapped although I appreciate from a teacher's perspective it will be more work.

Their

Sorry but my phone seems to remove the paragraphs when I send a message. Not quite sure why this is happening?

My DC is at selective schools. One doesn't set for maths until year 9. That feels a year too late, even for such a narrow band of abilities. Some kids need more coaching and some need more stretching.

cakes There is so much wrong with your last post I hardly know where to start.

I have a maths degree. I think maths is important. I think times tables are important (though actually I have learned they aren't essential, there are ways around if you have a pen and paper). The amount of time we have put in over the years helping my DD2 learn her times tables is ridiculous - she still doesn't know them well.

It has already been explained at length why you can't just pick one bit of the Finnish system and claim it is the reason for them doing well. The French system has also been explained to you.

I asked above for your experience & qualifications on this (and gave you mine).

Repeating the same assertions over and over again without addressing the counter arguments isn't a way to construct and win a discussion.

Repeating the same assertions over and over again without addressing the counter arguments isn't a way to construct and win a discussion.
I agree.
But in a few months time when someone else has a question about setting you can bet your bottom dollar Cakes will be back repeating the same old illogical arguments, cherry picking from different systems and claiming anyone who disagrees with their opinion obviously hates the idea of change and is happy to fail children.

noblegiraffe

There are several other points from Shanghai which make it even more difficult to compare:

• Out of school coaching is the norm. So students will spend hours every afternoon / evening working with out of school tutors. School-based education forms a very small part of their educational experience.

• Shanghai schools are socially selective, because of the rules around who may live in, and their children attend school in, Shanghai. Essentially, the vast majority of children in Shanghai schools are those from ambitious middle class richer households. It's like taking only results from private schools as representative of 'England's education system as a whole'.

• The school curriculum is VERY narrow: it would be the equivalent of every child in school in England having lessons only in Maths, English and Science.

Singapore has sets, streaming and selection at 11. kids in the slower stream take 1 year longer to do GCSEs - which sounds sensible.

Kids in Asian countries have out of school tutoring and probably much better classroom behaviour (enforced by parents and school). This probably makes it easier to teach them.

Cakes - Shouldn’t both parents and school make sure kids memorize their times tables before finishing primary? If they don’t then maybe a more appropriate thing is to have an after school times tables/arithmetic club or spend more time before entering secondary rather than half the class being bored and getting disruptive and the UK having fewer maths experts.

You can teach the same topic at different levels and racing through the syllabus is not really in the interest of even the brightest; but basic multiplication, fractions etc are often a requirement for such work.

www.mathematicsmastery.org/the-uk-singapore-and-shanghai-whats-the-same-and-whats-different/

Our primary has stopped setting for maths.
I'm not happy.
Can't see the point in questioning it though.

Thank God DD has done all the hard work of getting into her school. No setting now... as they are all precocious know it all's. (She used to get terribly stressed about flunking an assessment and ending up in ...heaven forbid...the second set at primary)

Oblomov18
Are they set as in different classes or set as in there's different levels of work on different tables?
If you think your child isn't progressing thrn it always worth a polite chat with the teacher about that.
If it's just a difference of opinion then I'd let them get on with it as there is no single grouping and seating solution that will work perfectly for every child.

Cakes - you are right that kids with SEN or low ability should also be taught well - probably in smaller groups with an experienced teacher - so they get more attention. I’m just not sure that not having sets is gonna be beneficial to them?

Our experience - upper primary - has been that, while children with very acute SEN leading to being 4 or 5 years behind benefit from wholly separate teaching, those who might have been 'the top of the lowest set' [bearing in mind that in primary at least, numbers of formal sets taught in different rooms will be small so spread of ability in each very large] benefit from being in a mixed ability class. It has been the same for 'top of the middle set' vs 'bottom of the top set' - those groups have also done better in mixed ability teaching (the top of the middle set might previously not accessed quite the same advanced reasoning material as the top set, and being the bottom of the top set proved detrimental to the self esteem and maths learning of some very able pupils), and in our case, without detriment to the highest ability though we do have to plan very meticulously.

(I work, btw, in a primary that was large enough to have sets, and has abandoned them .... with the result that results have hugely improved. What is most interesting is that high performers have continued to excel, while 'upper middle set' and 'upper lower set' pupils have done MUCH better than previously. Yes, as Noble said, this has involved 'working our arses off' BUT it has meant improvement in the experience and performance of pupils... You could argue that it is the hard work and total re-planning of the curriculum and resources that has resulted in the improvement - ie that amount of thought and hard work put into setted Maths would have had the same effect, but it is interesting and, actually, not what most of us predicted )

That shows to me that sets are detrimental, but do require training and re-planning of the curriculum.

Maisy, good to see that you are in your literary form. The only person expressing illogical colourful distortions and victimhood is you.
There is no doubt that the smug group, the invested proponents of the status quo, for whom the sets system works, all agree with each other. Sets wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a smug consensus. Them disagreeing with me is obvious, but does not make setting right.

Try to engage with the argument.

MaisyPops, they used to go to a different teacher, in a different classroom for maths. So in effect there was a top, middle and bottom set, or 1,2,3, however you want to view it.

Now as a school, they stay with their teacher for maths and most other teaching other than science, music and pe.

I view it that the schools are focusing on their league tables, trying to bring the children with the lowest marks up. An of course I don't have a problem with that.
But I wonder if it's at the detriment to the bright children who won't be stretched as much.
Or is my concern invalid?

I'll probably never know.

There is no doubt that the smug group, the invested proponents of the status quo, for whom the sets system works, all agree with each other. Sets wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a smug consensus
There isn't a smug consensus. For maths the evidence suggests setting is the most effective way to teach on the whole.
For other subjects it is a bit more open ended as the nature of the subjects are quite different.
If there was a smug consensus then all schools would set across the board.But they don't.
Try to engage with the argument.
Thats quite patronising. You mean like I have all the way through by saying:

• sets are normally best for maths based on evidence
• schools group based on a number of factors
• there are a number of factors which influence student performance
• setting has pros and cons
• mixed has pros and cons
• going on with a million references to 35% and blaming staff when the grading system is norm referenced makes no sense
• when someone asks you for a way to make your solution work, saying "yeah well you are meant to be the experts. I bet you wouldn't ask a patient to tell a surgeon how to improve" is silly and illogical because a patient wouldn't try to claim nuanced understanding of medicine or lecture surgeons on the medical system.
• elements of the system need reform. There is no perfect system. It just doesn't mean mixed ability is the solution.
• implying parents only do educational activities with kids because of the existence of sets is not a logical claim
• denying there's any difference in ability beyond 2% at the top/bottom is not logical
• endlessly cherry picking elements of international systems which suit your view whilst ignoring any other variables isn't a coherent argument
• claiming people who don't agree with you are happy to fail children isn't a coherent argument
• claiming people who don't agree with you are anti change isn't a coherent argument

In other words, as I've said multiple times... The issue of groupings is more complex and nuanced than your opinion cakes.

Oblomov18
Honestly there's pros and cons. Without knowing your school context then it's difficult to say for sure. It will depend on your cohort. A class that is largely top of expected progress with lots of greater depth and a few working towards is probably going to be different than a class of 3 greater depth and the rest of the class expected or lower.
I find mixed works well (at least in my experience) when the cohort overall is quite able so working expected or higher.

On the whole (and maybe this is as someone who likes mixed & sets for different reasons), I find pitching a lesson high and offering additional support to half a dozen at the bottom is generally easier than pitching to the middle and then having to think of ways to stretch the top.
Mixed ability is harder if most of the class is bottom of expected or lower with a couple of outliers. It can be done but I think it's more difficult overall.

Not a teacher, but I am really struggling to imagine how mixed ability teaching can possibly work in secondary school in the UK.

From my understanding, it is normal to stick kids on "ability tables" (hate that phrase) from early primary school age onwards, meaning their progress is going to start following different trajectories from early on and the differences are going to be massive by secondary age.

I live in a country where maths is taught "whole-class" throughout primary school, and educational processes such as more homework, more enforced practice, more workbooks at home and quite a lot of summer homework mean that the "spread" by secondary school age is a lot smaller than it will be in the UK. And even here, mixed-ability maths classes don't really work by junior high school level, not in the state system. Kids in state secondary schools here often end up sleeping through lessons and then doing their "real" maths in the evening at the tutoring schools.