How important is setting?

[Bunnycat101]

I’m having a bit of an internal dilemma about private v our state school for secondary. The private’s are significantly better - I just don’t know if we can afford private fees/justify the opportunity cost. The good states near me are at around 40% 9-7 for gcse but the one we’d get into is only 23% - the non selective privates are 50-60%and the selective schools are more like 70% grade 9. My children are bright but I have never been convinced re the bright kids do well anywhere thing- it feels like they’d have to do exceptionally well to get good grades at our state but could be average and do well at the privates.

The thing that is bothering most about the catchment state other than the results gap is the lack of setting for subjects other than maths. I went to a fairly shit comp but was set for the majority of subjects and I'm sure that is the only reason I got through with good results. My classes that weren’t set were awful in comparison to the ones that were. Is the move away from setting common now? I’d be quite worried about the extent to which they can push the clever ones while dealing with disruption etc.

the reasearch is interesting.

A good school can increase the outcome for a child by about 10%. The biggest influence for a child is home, the attitude to education, supportive of school and homework etc. So you could say that a good school can ONLY increase outcomes by 10%. But I know for my son, I wanted him in a peer group where it was cool to be clever, and our local comp was not that at all. He ended up at a grammar.

I find your school figures interesting - 40% at grades 7-9 seems a lot, if you think about the whole school being a reflection of the whole of society (and private schools aren't, they are selective, not necessarily academically, but certainly they select) then to have 40% achieving very high above average scores is amazing.

Setting has been shown to be bad for most kids, most kids apparently do better in a mixed class. The exception is the top 10% of kids who don't do better in a mixed set, I assume because they don't get pushed/stretched enough.
I find that really hard to believe though, and I would wonder if that research took into account behaviour and disruption which can be an issue.

When you say that they only set for maths- do you mean in year 7? My kids weren’t set for say science in year 7 but there were science sets by GCSE. No sets for English is surprising.
I’m not surprised that other subjects aren’t set because most kids won’t have studied those subjects before year 7 (history, MFL etc) so I think it’s fair to assume that everyone is starting at the same place and not set until later.

There's not really an objectively correct answer to this, the empirical evidence, such as it is, is quite mixed, i.e. if you look hard enough you can easily find an ostensibly credible-looking study which says that attainment setting is absolutely essential/ruinously bad. By international standards UK schools use attainment setting quite a lot.

OP says that the school in question only sets for maths but as pointed out by a previous poster, I'm sure that later on they'll at a minimum do it for e.g. science, since some will be sitting 'double' science and others 'triple'.

My instinct has always been that MFL is one of the areas where setting is most important, because there tends to be quite a bit of speaking in pairs, in front of the class, and so on, which can get plain embarrassing if there's too wide a range of attainment levels.

My personal preference would be for setting for nothing in Y7 and setting for everything [other than possibly PE, tech, and whatnot] in Y8 onwards, but this view is by no means uniquely correct.

So it seems like they have a policy of only setting for maths all through the school. I’m not sure how that works though in gcse as some kids do triple science and others double so you’d sort of assume some setting by proxy for science at least but definitely no setting for subjects like English lit or history. They also seem to stick with their tutor group for all subjects so if you get a bad class, you’re stuck (and vice versa if you’re lucky).

We’ve got no chance of getting into the states with 40% 9-7 sadly- they are excellent but the catchment tiny. We’re at a point in primary where people near us are starting to do strategic house moves but we’re less keen to do that so it is private or lower performing state for us.

This is just my own anecdata but I started secondary school nearish top of the class for English and really enjoying the subject but 3 years of mixed ability teaching put me right off and I was only average by year 10. However I was set for maths and stayed about the same with that subject. I learned to like reading again as an adult though.

The setting is less important than the behaviour management, students can be in top set and still behave appallingly if not managed effectively. Second to that is friendship groups, bright kids can throw potential away in the wrong group.

It may have a low % 7-9 but they will have students with reading ages as low as 6 years and various SEND that make achieving higher than a 2-3 impossible they will have the full range of learning ability whereas any private school will have parents that excel and do well because they are in a position to afford the fees and therefore their children are more likely to be bright or at least value education as a family unit.

Go state and use the money you save on fees on tutors and cultural capital activities etc. it's not worth putting financial strain on the family when you don't have to.

Re setting.

In years 10 and 11 as students chose GCSEs it's quite rare for GCSEs that are not compulsory to be set.

So the compulsory GCSEs are maths, English lit and language and science (either double or triple)

The other GCSEs people choose, and they are usually put into option blocks.

So if for example twenty people choose German, they are the twenty people in your GCSE group and it will be mixed ability.

Most schools have some kind of pathways system to encourage students to do GCSEs that they are capable of. So high attaining students can choose what they want. Students who are lower attaining may have to drop a gcse (often languages) to do extra maths and English in that time.

So if your child chooses (for example) history German Spanish and Latin at GCSE they are likely to be in classes with middle to higher attainers at least for those options.

If they choose art, child development and btec PE they are likely to be with lower attainers.

What this means in practice is that even in completely mixed ability schools at gcse there is an element of separation due to choices made.

That having been said, mixed ability in science and maths is quite controversial. English less so as everyone sits the same gcse (there is no foundation/higher split) and students can access the same material at a different level which is much less the case in maths and science.

Triple science is its own subject and will be taught in an option block whilst other students do whatever their option is.

Also, what happens at the local schools now is not reflective of what will happen when your child starts there, bringing in a new head and leadership team can bring both swift positive or negative change.

If they offer triple science then they are in effect setting for science.

It's harder than double and most schools have some kind of system whereby only the higher attainers are allowed to choose it.

My school used to make people "apply" for it and then they were chosen whether to do it or not.

Triple science is not harder than double it is more but different content, you can still sit both Foundation or Higher. Student do have to like science though and have an interest in it.

The school might also offer 'invite only' GCSEs that are only for the brightest like Further Maths. DD is doings hers one afternoon after school and it is taught remotely by the Head of Maths for the Academy Trust her school belongs too, with all students taking it from the Trust throughout the country on the same session if the schools don't have enough students to warrant a proper class.

Re: "The setting is less important than the behaviour management, students can be in top set and still behave appallingly if not managed effectively. Second to that is friendship groups, bright kids can throw potential away in the wrong group."

I think this is true. I'll add:
In primary, the home environment is the most important variable in determining outcomes. But at secondary, this changes: the peer group becomes the most important factor (among other sources, I was told this by a very well regarded independent secondary school head, whose honest message was "yes, our teaching is good, but half of what you're paying for is the peer group".
Secondly, kids in the bottom set are a mixture of less academic kids who are trying their best, and extremely disruptive kids. As a result, the kids who would like to learn, can't. I've never seen research that adjusted for the effect of behaviour rather than just looking at ability/attainment. But the behaviour of a minority of students in the bottom set of a cohort is generally going to hold other kids back.
In most subjects I'd also rather have a top-notch teacher teaching an unset class than a mediocre or poor teacher teaching a class with a narrow ability range. Ultimately, they're teaching the same curriculum, assuming e.g. that it's higher tier GCSE. I've seen good teachers in e.g English, biology and chemistry give effective lessons to classes with wide ability range - the caveat being most of the kids were well behaved so time wasn't wasted on behaviour management.

@steppemum
Is this correct as I thought all research indicated that girls overperformed dramatically in a single sex setting?
Boys do better in mixed.
Please advise where you read this as I would be really interested thank you😊

My DC's school only sets in maths (and science from Year 10).
Nearby school, with similar profile of intake sets in every subject from day 1.

Results virtually identical.

Good teaching is a lot more important than sets. And there are lots of downsides to sets - setting for children with spiky profiles doesn't always work too well, for example, and children can have limits set on what they can achieve based on the set they are in. A quick perusal of MN will also tell you how many schools aren't that great at moving students between sets in a timely manner.

I did not mention single sex schools at all?
The question is about setting for ability not sex?

But yes I have also heard that single sex is better for girls and mixed for boys.

I do find it all interesting though, as I completely agree with PP who said behaviour management is key, and I don't know how much the research reflects that. (and it may vary enormously from teacher to teacher.)

I also agree with the peer group comment.
The 10% figure is really about the effect of the school, which doesn't include peer group. It was peer group that made us go down the grammar and travel to next town route.
being cool to be clever, as opposed to hiding your cleverness. Being amongst kids who have ambition and aiming for professions and university is quite important for unmotivated kids who need that peer group 'normality'

Depends on the school. At my DC's school it's only a very small number of students that are not allowed to take triple science.
Personally I'd want to avoid a school with rigid requirements for triple science if I had a child who was interested in science.

DC goes to a high performing state school and we have stats from 2023 for all subjects. Is the stats for 7+ for all subjects or average? DC school I can see varies a lot across subjects, I would say 40% at 7+ is pretty good.

For all likelihood it's a different school but I'll try to explain how it works. The school sets for maths in Year 7 but not for any other subjects. The kids don't know what set they are in. When DC1 join, we were told they were taught in tutor groups but in Year 8, DC1 is no longer taught with her tutor group but instead of a tutor session once a week. They mixed all the children up and I have no idea how the timetabling works if it's not by sets.

Science is like you say that triple science is the higher set and double the lower. They are timetabled for the same number of lessons so triple are taught at a faster pace.

If you can pay for private, what's holding you back?

I don't think it's "all research". I know that there is some research. I think that some of it was commissioned by chains of private girls' schools in the UK & Australia. It may well be right that girls do better in all-girls' schools on balance, but I seem to remember skim-reading the odd bit of some of the research & detecting a whiff of bias, e.g. going hard on the question 'are some quieter girls intimidated by the presence of loudly high-achieving boys in their STEM classes' but even bothering to test whether, say, some quieter girls are intimidated by the presence of loudly high-achieving girls in their STEM classes.

• not even bothering...

@steppemum thanks.
MN is such an education!

@steppemum
pretty much all research, not restricted to country or school (private v state) say girls perform better in a single sex setting and boys perform better in mixed. That's why I was so interested.

We don’t set at my school apart from maths - wonder if it is the same one!

This is true. What the research usually doesn’t consider are the adverse effects of all-girls’ schools (eg eating disorders). I would like to know the answer re: setting. I suspect that for most kids the quality of teaching and behaviour is most important, but the brightest kids would still benefit from setting even with these factors optimised.

it depends on the time scale and on what you mean by "doing better".
Girls get slightly better academic results on leaving school if attending single-sex, whereas boys get slightly better academic results on leaving school in co-ed.
But if you follow-up much later, both sexes, if they have attended single-sex schools, have a higher divorce rate than those who attended co-ed schools, and also have higher rates of social adjustment problems. Single-sex education is not good preparation for living in a mixed-sex world, which is why most other countries won't countenance it, unless they're run by religious crackpots.

I think that "pretty much all research" is a huge exaggeration. Don't forget that someone has to pay for "research", the money could come from an academic research council but in answering that question is probably likelier to come from a vested interest.

e.g. see this data from Ireland, which is useful because single sex state schools are so popular there - single sex schools do indeed do much better, but when you control for prior attainment the difference fizzles away to very little.

https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/berj.3841

I don't think things are as clear cut as stating that setting makes all the difference. There are school elements, teachers, behavioural management, peers and then there are home elements, parental involvement, study environment and then there is the child themselves, motivated all the way through to lazy. It is complicated.

Certain fee paying schools will drop a child from sitting a GCSE on their books but still enter them as a private pupil so as not to upset their league tables and results. That means the child still gets X number of GCSEs but some or all might be recorded for the school.

Fee paying schools are also not equal in terms of results and it depends what access you have locally. I personally think a private tutor for one to one is better than a blanket fee paying school is better.

My youngest child is year 13, what helped our children to be successful academically was a combination of everything I mentioned above. A great state school, fantastic pastoral and no tolerance behavioural policy, great friendship group of academically able and motivated students, supportive, involved parents and a home that valued education and we widened their knowledge from day 1 in secondary for a bigger picture of what they were studying.

The school set for maths, English and science from year 7 everything else was mixed ability.