How do you feel about setting?

[gemmarowlands23]

Grouping children by ability is nothing new, but how do you feel about it? Personally, I feel that while it might be great for those children who are in the highest achieving group, the ones who are at the bottom may feel as though they are being left behind with no chance to improve their standard of work.

When children are in mixed ability groups, those who are more able can encourage those who are less able, and this means that they can progress in all ways - the more able children will improve their own abilities by trying to teach methods to the lesser able children.

When I was at school everything was mixed ability, and now it seems that setting is more common.

How do you feel about it? Do you feel that one method might hold children back from what they are capable of achieving?

[morag_peers]

I am a strong supporter of setting. The problem with mixed ability teaching is that the teacher will have to pitch to the middle of the group which leaves the most advanced children bored and unchallenged, and the weakest children left behind and unable to do the work. Or an even worse case scenario the work is pitched at the ability of the weakest pupil in the class and everyone falls behind.

Our Primary school has groups for Literacy and Numeracy right from the start. There is a good deal of movement between groups as children develop, and they are all developed at their own pace. At secondary, children are put into groups for Maths according to ability almost immediately, and after the first year they are set for English and Science too.

[firoze]

I have mixed (!) feelings about this. I used to think that it was unfair to group children like this because it was inevitable they would be pigeon-holed. However I've seen children in the slower sets come up to a very high standard because in the slower set they have been given more attention and extra work. Whereas children in the faster set have sometimes struggled because they are assumed to be on top of their work already. I think the real danger her is that of unfairly pigeon-holing a child. For example at a prep school will it affect the head-teacher's report to the secondary school? If this aspect can be controlled then setting is a good thing because it benefits the children of each set.