Streaming and setting - does it make a difference to achievement? 

Ability-based sets are 'best' for literacy

A report by the Social Market Foundation, a pro-market think tank, says that primary pupils should be grouped by ability and tested every eight weeks to ensure they are keeping up with the rest of the group.

The report, Fade or Flourish, suggests that literacy in primary schools is best taught in small, ability-based sets. Children would be assessed in September, then placed into groups. Reading levels would then be tested every two months and pupils would change sets, depending on how they compare to their peers.

Claudia Ward, a research fellow for the foundation and author of the report, said: "There is a lot of controversy around setting and streaming. But teachers teach better when they have a group with similar abilities. In a mixed-ability class, high-ability kids can be left to read by themselves, while teachers help the low-ability kids. But if all the abilities in a group are the same, then you can pitch the teaching at the right level." Alternatively, Ms Ward suggests, pupils should sit at different tables according to their ability. The teacher would then move from table to table, setting separate work for each group.

However, Sue Palmer, a literacy consultant, questions whether this is a useful approach. She says: "You're engendering a competitive, win-or-lose philosophy at a very early age. Testing doesn't make children literate, it just makes them able to pass tests. Literacy is one area in which all must have prizes. If you go in for winners and losers, society is the overall loser."

The reports recommendations are based on the Success for All literacy programme, developed in the United States. It is used in around 2,000 American schools. Controlled experiments suggest that it has had a significant effect on literacy levels. The scheme teaches literacy in daily 90-minute blocks, compared with the one-hour lessons outlined by the UK's national literacy strategy. Within such groups, children work in pairs, helping one another to read.

(TES, 30 June 2006)

DfES study fails to give full support to setting by ability

Setting pupils by ability, one of the most widely-trailed parts of the education white paper, has few benefits, a study funded by the Department for Education and Skills has concluded.

There is no evidence that streamed or set classes produce, on average, higher performance than mixed-ability classes, said the report. It also found that setting pupils is already widespread, particularly in maths.

The white paper calls for more grouping and setting of students by ability and says, "grouping students can help to build motivation, social skills and independence; and most importantly can raise standards because pupils are better engaged in their own learning".

The study by the universities of Brighton, Sussex, Cambridge and London university's institute of education, agrees that grouping children within classes, common in primary schools, may have the potential to raise standards, but it stresses that there is no known way of grouping pupils which will benefit all students. It says the debate between setting and mixed-ability teaching has become polarised and does not reflect what happens in schools where a wide range of ways of grouping pupils is used.

In secondary schools, where many assign pupils to classes for particular subjects based on ability, there is no academic advantage for most pupils in being set according to ability or taught in a mixed-ability class.

Gifted and talented pupils are believed to make more progress in a separate ability group. But for pupils in low-ability groups, the process could mean poorer teaching and a limited curriculum leading to pupils making less progress and becoming demotivated. The review concluded: "There are no significant differences between setting and mixed-ability teaching in overall attainment… but low-achieving pupils show more progress in mixed-ability classes and high-achieving pupils show more progress in set classes."

Three of the studies that made up part of the review noted that middle-class parents supported ability grouping. In primary schools about a quarter of maths classes and a seventh of English classes are set according to ability, but setting barely exists in other curricular subjects.

The effects of pupil grouping literature review is available at www.dfes.gov.uk/research. For more information see www.workingwithothers.org

(TES, 4 November 2005)

Professor Dylan Wiliam, one of Britain's leading assessment experts, found that secondary pupils placed in the top maths set score up to three grades higher at GCSE than they would have done if placed in the bottom set. Professor Wiliam concludes that setting may harm pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are over-represented in bottom sets, and that ministers should give parents a choice of schools to include those which do not set.

Professor Wiliam and Hannah Bartholomew analysed the results of 995 teenagers in six London schools, comparing their GCSE maths grades in 2000 with their 1998 key stage 3 scores. They found dramatic differences in progress made by pupils of similar ability according to the set in which they are placed. On average across the six schools - all of which set for maths - pupils in the top set achieved half a grade better at GCSE than would have been expected given their performance at KS3. Those in the bottom set scored half a grade worse than was suggested by their KS3 results, while those in intermediate sets were between these two extremes.

Critics might suggest, the study says, that the findings could be explained by the fact that schools tended to bias higher sets in favour of pupils who wanted to learn, even if they had not done well at KS3. However, it says the figures did not support this argument. Previous research has suggested that lower-set teachers were less well-qualified and had lower expectations of pupils. In April, a separate study from London University's institute of education found that pupils who were placed in the wrong set could underachieve at GCSE.

(TES Scotland, 16 July 2004)

Grouping pupils by ability in streams and sets has no influence on their performance. It can have a negative effect on the attitudes, motivation and self-esteem of lower ability pupils. Boys, pupils from working-class families and summer born children are more likely to be disadvantaged, says the NFER. The review, based on an analysis of more than 20 major studies in the UK and the USA, throws doubt on some of the claims that streaming and setting improve pupil achievement.  

The report says that while a decreasing number of schools use streaming, setting, by which pupils are grouped by ability for particular subjects, is increasing in primary schools, particularly with older pupils. The most common subjects for setting are maths, English and science.  

The main findings were that streaming or setting, compared with mixed ability teaching, have no effect on overall pupil achievement, or achievement across subject areas, either at primary or secondary level. But the limited research on within class grouping in primary schools shows that it does have a positive effect on pupils' attitudes, self esteem and achievement (mostly in linear subjects like maths and science).  
Streaming and setting have a detrimental effect on the attitudes and self-esteem amongst average and low ability pupils.They tend to reinforce divisions along lines of social class, gender, race and age. As a result, low ability classes often contain disproportionately large numbers of pupils from working class background, boys, ethnic minorities and summer born children.  
(Streaming, setting and grouping by ability by Laura Suknandan with Barbara Lee, is  published by NFER £6.00) 

Link to research summaries currently on the NFER website

OFSTED's report, 'Setting in Primary Schools' strongly recommends setting children as it can be a powerful way of improving performance. Last year, 4% of the 400,000 lessons observed by OFSTED were setted compared to just 2% the previous year. One in four of schools not currently using setting told researchers they planned to introduce it soon. However, OFSTED found that setting polarised the quality of teaching. Frequently teaching was either very good or poor depending on whether staff had modified strategies to cope with setting.  
Main findings of the report:  

• 70% of junior schools and 40% of primary schools use setting. 
• The proportion of setted lessons is still small but it has recently doubled. In 1996/97 only 2% of lessons observed by OFSTED were setted compared with 4% in 1997/8. 
• Setting is most common in urban schools with high levels of social disadvantage where standards are low. 
• Few schools avoided setting because of ideological objections. 
• Some schools in the OFSTED survey abandoned setting, usually for locally specific reasons such as a change in the age profile of pupils. 
• The highest proportion of setted lessons was in years 5 and 6, where 7% of observed lessons were setted. For this age group, one in four maths lessons and one in 10 English lessons were setted. 
• Inspectors believe setting polarises teaching quality: it is frequently either very good or poor. 
• The best teaching was consistently reported in the top sets. 
• Concerns were raised about difficulties of reporting progress to parents when the set teacher is not also the class teacher and the loss of opportunity to extend work beyond the timetabled period. 
• Parents are very supportive of setting, but often receive too little information about why the school adopted setting or why their child has been allocated to a particular set. 

The report concluded that to take full advantage of setting, teachers need to teach the set as a whole, and to strengthen their whole class teaching. Setting failed when teachers continued to teach the set as a mixed ability group and over used individual work or attempted to sub divide the set into ability groups.  
'Setting in Primary Schools' is available from OFSTED publications centre, PO Box 6927, London E3 3NZ. Tel 0171 510 0180.