When Clarendon was at senior school, they took streaming extremely seriously. Not, methinks, out of some profound pedagogical insight, but because they thought that ritual humiliation was character building. They would sit us down in school assembly and read our exam results from thickest to brightest, with enthusiastic jeering accompanying the early names on the list. I can’t properly evaluate the efficacy of this character building stunt, but, having seen a few old school friends at my 40th birthday party last Saturday, I can confirm that “characters” were indeed built – an anecdotal fallacy perhaps.
We were streamed for core subjects too, with the dreaded F12 in our first year being the preserve of unthinking troglodytes, who were presumably tearing pages out of their books and flinging their own faeces against the wall. F1, on the other hand, was an ethereal, other-world realm inhabited solely by geniuses so precocious, so delicate that they were kept from contamination in their own boarding house.
In recent years, there has been a move away from this strict adherence to streaming by ability, with education researchers like Jeannie Oakes advocating Detracking or Anti-Labelling Theory, which critics might decry as “woke nonsense” (I don’t know why my imagined critic is so cranky), but whose supporters commend as an antidote to teachers subconsciously lowering expectations for bottom setters, as well as the bottom setters themselves internalising this academic low status.
The UCL Institute for Education has recently published a fairly comprehensive study on the matter, looking at Maths sets in year 8 building towards the PTM13, a GL Assessment standardised test. The key finding for this study was that mixed ability groups did not significantly benefit low attaining pupils, but that high attainers were significantly hampered by being in mixed ability groups, with their progress being slowed by about 2 months.
This has been jumped on by many as concrete proof that mixed ability streaming doesn’t work under any circumstances, but we don’t think it’s as simple as that. Here are some of our key takeaways:
- Streaming by ability helps high attainers. The evidence of the study clearly supports this. It is why we are seeing the launch of the 1729 Maths school in North London in September. As educators, we must think about how we can best support the high attainers, as well as the low attainers.
- Some subjects are more suited to this type of streaming. Maths, in particular, involves mastering topics before moving on with syllabus, it is the subject that lends itself most easily to difficult extension tasks and it is often the subject of with the widest variance of abilities.
- Whilst other subjects would benefit from form mixed ability streaming. Subjects that are more driven by the sharing of ideas – English Literature, Philosophy and Theology, History – may actually be improved by the mixing of different minds and ideas.
- In order for ability streaming to be effective for all students, streaming should be flexible and constantly assessed. There should also be a key emphasis on growth mindset for the bottom set.