Setting – time for a rethink?

Student grouping – the issue

Schools tend to arrange their students into groups – it makes teaching manageable – but how we choose to group our students cuts to the heart of our beliefs and values as educators.
The 1944 Education Act, which introduced Grammar and Secondary modern schools, drove ability streaming in primary schools. However, by the early 1960s this was increasingly being questioned as outdated, and between 1962 and 1964 the proportion of primary teachers who favoured “streaming” had fallen significantly from 80% to 30% (although 75% of parents still preferred to have their children taught in streamed classes.)¹

Ability and mixed ability grouping have continued to move in and out of fashion since the 1960s. As with so much else relating to education in England, this is, at least partly, political. Comprehensive education was introduced by a Labour government in 1965 and, even now, there is a view that well-meaning, liberal teachers shy away from placing kids in "faster" and "slower" classes to create social equality at the expense of rigour. Studies on mixed ability Vs ability streaming show that both work but, unsurprisingly, the efficacy of any type of grouping relies on the quality of teaching.

The trouble with this response is three-fold:

1. It places at its core the convenience of teachers rather than the benefit of students. It is undoubtedly easier to plan material for classes where children are perceived to be working at a similar level. Whilst the comment above suggests that pupil progress is the rationale for setting, the final sentence reveals that, underlying this, is an anxiety about the capacity of the teacher.
2. Teachers are very much aware of the psychological impact of ability grouping, one classroom teacher from the same study said, “Ability groups can be highly limiting and lead to disruptive behaviour, especially at the lower ability end.” This is an issue which increases in impact as students get older and their perception of their own ability and likelihood of success is reinforced year-on-year with a related impact upon behaviour, attitude and outcomes.
3. Grouping, whilst supposedly based upon perceived ability, actually takes into account a range of different factors which unavoidably influence the decisions made by teachers. These include behaviour, attitude, gender balance and classroom management. Previous research has found that disadvantaged children, and those from single parent families, are more likely to be in lower ability sets, and it doesn’t stop there. The advantage of being born in the Autumn plays out, with 71% of September born pupils and just 26% of August born pupils in top sets³ and, shamefully, black students are two and a half times more likely to be “misallocated” to a bottom set-in maths.⁴

This binary choice, to group by ability or not, becomes entirely void once we accept that intelligence can be grown, we can teach students to be successful and there is no such thing as inherent “ability.” So, in effect we have been grouping students based upon their current level of performance – then embedding that level as a pre-determined outcome by tailoring the opportunities and level of challenge accordingly. But of course, this means we are paying absolutely no heed to the fact that each student always has potential.

What is the answer?

Whether we choose to group students together with those we believe have similar ability, or mix them with those we believe have different levels of ability, we are making the same assumptions, that:

1. Students have a ’quotient‘ of ability and we know what that is
2. We have ’equal expectations‘ of everyone

If “a key breakthrough in our knowledge of the brain in this century is that brain structure and function is not fixed and unchangeable – but is exquisitely plastic, moldable by experience throughout life”⁶ then we must conclude that notions of ability are outdated and an irrelevant factor in grouping children. However, it is also unsustainable to pretend that students are not operating at different levels and that all teachers are able to manage this variation in their day-to-day teaching.
For most students we know two things:

1. Their current level of performance
2. The level of performance they need to reach by the end of the current educational stage

If, when grouping, we can forget about ability and talk about performance, this changes everything. It isn’t just semantics – ability carries the assumption that this is an immutable characteristic of a child that teaching can only serve to mitigate. Performance, on the other hand, is a temporary state which teaching is designed to improve.

We can compare this to the change in the way we now view student behaviour. In the past teachers talked about ‘naughty children,’ as if their behaviour was a manifestation of something intrinsically bad. We have moved beyond that and now talk about ‘behaviour”’which is inappropriate or unacceptable. It is the behaviour we don’t like, the child can be empowered to change that – and we know how to support them.

Why then, is it still acceptable to talk about “low ability?” What we are seeing is performance which is below the level we expect and below the level it needs to be. This performance isn’t a manifestation of something intrinsically wrong with the child, it is something the child can be empowered to change – and we know how to grow the competences for academic success.