Today I led our virtual 15MF via Teams. This form of informal professional learning has been growing in our school for over 2 years, a real grassroots movement at lunchtimes. We have discussed all sorts of teaching and learning strategies, research, ideas, themes and so on in that time and today was no different, looking at the benefits of mixed ability groupings.
Stemming from the reading and preparation I did for a recent academic essay I was doing, it became apparent that there is a lot of research out there suggesting that for many students mixed ability teaching allows them to get better outcomes, in fact that setting doesn’t actually seem to benefit many groups of students. This intrigued me as I am used to the idea of both setting, streaming and mixed ability across schools, and it is really, really common. Yet the research doesn’t seem to setting, in fact it can lead to those in lower sets or streams having poorer outcomes and poorer self esteem. This is not what we, as educators, want for our pupils – and not what we, as leaders, want for our schools.
The presentation went well, 15mins to about 20 staff who had joined us, but it was the discussion afterwards, as ever, that led to the thinking caps being put on! Ultimately, regardless of what subject taught, how many years of experience or whether a supporter of sets or not, the consensus seemed to be that we need a culture of learning that fits our needs as a school. Context is critical, review is essential and having an overarching ideal – a gold standard – of what we want learning to look like in our school is a great start. Right now, as we move towards a new curriculum in Wales, what better time to start writing that idea up. Talk to departments, find out about the nuances of their subject and what they see great learning to be in their room. Do they find sets to be beneficial, do they prefer mixed ability, what does differentiation look like in that subject and how are learners scaffolded and supported? Gather this together, make a plan and a shared vision…then consider the logistics. Can a maximum class size work, can we have LSA’s linked to specific subjects, can we start our year 7 with a literacy rich “bootcamp” sharing our culture and talking up the importance of effort above all else? What will the costs be, will the timetable allow it, can it be staffed?
Today’s discussion really took the initial presentation to a new level, it isn’t just about ability groupings or not, it is about the culture and ethos of learning that permeates through a school. It is how schools go from “needing improvement” to “good”, how the “good” become “outstanding” – it often involves a hard reset, a back to basics approach but unless we have that gold standard in our head, that vision, that ideal that we all buy into (because we have all contributed to it) then it won’t work. As we go toward our new curriculum should schools be spending this time, and next year, planning their own Gold Standard, as much as looking at how the subjects will divide up the What Matters statements and which particular aspects they will study? Yes, I think so. We don’t need to polarise, we can have sets and mixed ability, we can have knowledge rich but still use the skills and enquiry approach, we can have highly “academic” and highly “wellbeing” focused curriculum running in parallel. If our school is successful, our learners are happy and achieving their best we don’t need to throw it all out and start a clean sheet – even if schools are deemed as less successful we still have successes and should not be afraid to shout about them. But wherever our school is on the non-existent league table of good schools (we all know the mythical league table of schools that is perceived by others!) we can still improve, we can still have a Gold Standard to aspire to – and each one of those will be unique, contextually dependent for sure and reflective of the values of the staff and the local community.
I didn’t expect a chat on mixed ability vs setting to end with me considering whole school development but it has, the potential is there, the willingness from teachers is there, as a friend of mine says the experts are already in the room…so, as I often end with…What’s Next?
Adventures in Education 