Streaming primary school pupils labels them for life

Melissa Benn's picture
 67
Research shows students from mixed-ability schools perform better academically and achieve more social mobility, says Melissa Benn. This piece was published in the Guardian site on Tuesday 9th August 2011.

Long ago, when I started at my shiny new comprehensive, our year group was divided into 12 classes, comprising four ability streams. Most of the white, middle-class children were placed in the top bands while the poor, black or transient pupils were largely put in the bottom streams. By our third year in secondary school, streaming had been abolished in favour of a mixed-ability approach. But the damaging labels endured, throughout our school lives and beyond.



Several decades on, and the wheel has apparently turned full circle. Streaming, the wholesale allocation of children to groups on the basis of a fixed, single ability label, is making a big comeback, part of the retro traditionalism sweeping our education system. According to a recent study from the Institute of Education, one in six primary-age children within the UK is now streamed by the age of seven.

In some schools, the practice is so extreme as to amount to a return of the grammar-school principle. Crown Woods school in south London has caused a furore for its decision to house children in "schools within schools", according to ability, each with its own colour-coded uniform. Fighting has already been reported between students located in different blocks.

But there's a twisted logic behind the Crown Woods scenario. Surrounded by selective or partially selective schools, and struggling to stay atop the league tables, the school is merely responding to the market. In today's competitive climate, more and more schools are caught up in local turf wars, trying to win their share of high-achieving pupils.

Educationally speaking, however, this is pure disaster. Researching the recent history of UK schooling, I was fascinated to discover how much of the 1944 Education Act was based on the IQ work of educational psychologist Sir Cyril Burt, whose research was later discredited.

In the words of one sceptical civil servant of the time, Burt believed "that children were divided into three kinds. It was sort of Platonic. There were golden children, silver children and iron children." Each was to be assigned to different institutions – grammar, secondary modern or the technical schools – according to these rigidly, unimaginative descriptors.

We've come a long way since then – or have we? Certainly, all the current international evidence points powerfully in the opposite direction. The highest-performing and fairest school systems in the world delay specialisation and setting – the grouping of children into different classes for different subjects – until much later in adolescence.

Academic Jo Boaler followed two groups of young adolescents in the mid-90s, one separated into rigid ability groups, the other taught in mixed-ability groupings. Not only did the mixed-ability students outperform those who had been put into separate groups in national examinations, but when Boaler tracked down a representative sample from both schools, she found the mixed-ability group had achieved more social mobility, in relation to their parents, than their streamed peers.

Escaping early labelling had clearly expanded their sense of confidence into young adult life while those who had been streamed talked, famously, of "psychological prisons" from which they never escaped.

Wroxham primary school in Hertfordshire has outlawed all ability labelling, including reference to the all-pervasive national curriculum levels. The headteacher, Alison Peacock, has taken the school from special measures to outstanding status in a few years, and produced cohorts of confident, inquiring learners.

Wroxham is part of an exciting project called Learning Without Limits, which promotes a more open-ended and progressive view of human potential. Such work is particularly vital in the current climate, with so many siren voices declaring "mixed-ability teaching" a complete failure.

The irony, as Learning Without Limits understands, is that even to talk of "mixed ability" is to constrain and categorise, in unimaginative fashion, what we believe the child is capable of learning.

Something vital is at stake in all these arguments, not just about the quality of learning in our schools, but the kind of school system, and society, we ultimately want to foster.

For all its rhetoric about improving the education of poorer children, many of the coalition government's reforms risk returning us to rigid, know-your-place, limiting hierarchies. Now, more than ever, we need to keep alive the theory and practice of rich, alternative visions.

• Melissa Benn's latest book, School Wars: the Battle for Britain's Education, will be published by Verso on 5 September
Share on Twitter Share on Facebook

Be notified by email of each new post.





Comments

Andrew Old's picture
Mon, 15/08/2011 - 14:30

I want you to explain how to teach a mixed ability lesson clearly enough that I no longer think it impossible and an excuse for not teaching and setting activities instead, rather than simply explaining that the outcomes of the apparently impossible act are so wonderful.

The positive consequences of setting? The positive consequence is that one can teach them.

W Smith's picture
Mon, 15/08/2011 - 17:43

Teach them what?


Andrew Old's picture
Mon, 15/08/2011 - 17:53

I think we can now conclude you are simply dodging the question.


W Smith's picture
Wed, 17/08/2011 - 07:33

Andrew - I think the question may be a bit too big for you! If it's all about teaching to the exam "set" for you regardless of how meaningful or meaningless it might be, then your way of looking at what education is in my opinion limited. This limited view of not providing an education system where all of our children are able to achieve and be successful adults who contribute to, not disown and disengage, with society, is in part responsible for what we are living through now. You may huff and puff and mock high aspirations for all, but continually putting children into boxes from an early age will continue to have a negative impact on them and us. But at least you enjoy teaching these boxes - so at least someone is happy! Take a step back, look at the bigger picture and imagine.............................
Jim - haha I wonder if we can put some blame on our education system for the banking crisis - or maybe that is really making the picture too big - do you think?
Melissa Ben writes a good article today in the Guardian. Have you listened to any of Ken Robinson's talks at TED or read any of his work - very thought provoking for teachers I think!

Andrew Old's picture
Wed, 17/08/2011 - 09:36

I linked to this earlier: http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/why-it-is-annoying-... I suggest reading it.

If you have to change the purpose of education in order to convince people that your ideas might work, can we not consider the possibility that your ideas don't work? I am reminded of homeopaths who, when confronted with the fact their treatment doesn't actually cure the illness it was recommended for, suddenly declare that they are treating the "whole person" not the illness. I'm sure we can move the goalposts to reach the point where mixed ability classes achieve something, but if that something is not recognisable as an education to anyone but the ideologues of mixed ability, then what's the point?

W Smith's picture
Wed, 17/08/2011 - 16:29

You are right Andrew - we would definitely have to move the goal posts. We are all "whole people" after all and deserve the best education , so the goal posts maybe worth moving.
Continuing your medical theme, I think there are far to many different tablets being taken and far to many sticking plasters being put over our very flawed system that is no where near fit for purpose for the 21st century. To pretend otherwise is to let a lot of children down and ultimately ourselves. My own experience of teaching in the state system for 17 years and watching my own children and their friends work their way through it, from nursery to university has demonstrated without doubt that unless we fundamentally change what we call "education", we are going to be forever taking pills that never actually get to the root of the problem .( streaming/setting is one of many symptoms!).
Thanks for the link. Have a read of "What's The Point of School?" - Guy Claxton, again very thought provoking.

Andrew Old's picture
Wed, 17/08/2011 - 19:07

Feel free to go off on whatever ideological flight of fantasy you like.

It just doesn't say much for the *realities* of mixed-ability teaching that you have to.


Janet Downs's picture
Sat, 20/08/2011 - 09:55

Thanks, Alan. That video is inspirational. The Times Ed published an article (August 19) about the importance of the arts in education. Not only do they enrich pupils' minds but they "engage the disengaged and raise educational standards." The article ends with a plea to those who are reviewing the national curriculum and to Mr Gove about the extent of the EBac:

"...will it [the Government] at last abandon the core/non-core divide, crude in conception and damaging in its consequences, and replace it with a more generous account of children's educational entitlement, at one bound leaping from the 19th century to the 21st?"

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6109287


Melissa Benn's picture
Sat, 20/08/2011 - 10:10

Yes I saw that piece, by Robin Alexander. What he says is so important. Government - listen!


Janet Downs's picture
Sat, 20/08/2011 - 13:30

Interesting ending to the piece by Behaviour Guru:

"And every time I hear people calling for a revolution in the curriculum, or a brand, brave new world of education, where pupils turn up and give the lessons in semi-circles, using the medium of the Haka to describe their physics homework, I roll my eyes and wonder when the bad noises in my head will stop. "

Is he referring to Mr Gove, I wonder? Didn't Mr Gove say it was time for a "cultural revolution just like the one they've had in China". And Mr Gove isn't a teacher, so why should he lecture teachers on how to teach? Surely it should be up to teachers to decide what methods are best appropriate for pupils and not enshrined in law by someone with a pet theory?

And is the evidence, evidence? Or is it anecdotal? Or just illustrative?

Alan's picture
Sat, 20/08/2011 - 21:47

Francis Galton’s distorted view on human breeding had a massive impact on Cyril Burt – the rest is standardised history.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/iq-the-bri...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IQ-Psychology-Hijacked-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B00...

Janet Downs's picture
Sun, 14/10/2012 - 08:46

Andrew - reply to your two posts above (no reply button). I'm sorry if my responses are not swift enough for you but I was preparing a considered reply (with links) not a knee-jerk reaction. Here it is:

Andrew – I apologise for not giving the link to the “Vorderman” report (it was given in my referenced post above). However, to save you scrolling up I’ve given the link below.

The report into Maths teaching is colloquially called the “Vorderman” report because Carol Vorderman was the chair of the investigating team. The lead author was in fact Roger Porkess who described himself thus: “I was a classroom mathematics teacher for about 25 years and then moved into curriculum development, running Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI) for 20 years. I retired from being MEI’s Chief Executive in 2010 but am still an active member of the mathematics subject community and involved with several mathematics organisations.”

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmeduc/141/14...

I was, therefore, not quoting “Carol Vorderman” but citing “A world-class mathematics education for all our young people” (2011) which, despite some inaccuracies about the use of the flawed 2000 OECD PISA figures, seems to be a solid piece of research (but that’s only my “opinion”).

http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2011/08/~/media/Files/Dow...

As far as the authorship of the TES phonics article, in which the author wrote that the phonics method was important but criticised Nick Gibb's approach, I'll leave you to speculate. It's a convention that authors of the "What keeps me awake at night" are anonymous (many authors criticise practices in their schools). I shall respect that convention - so should you. I give the link to the article below and remind you that it was not produced as "evidence" to "prove" my point of view, but to support my point of view in a different way.

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6210931

Please don't expect an immediate response. It is likely that my computer will be switched off for the rest of the day.

Andrew Old's picture
Tue, 16/10/2012 - 05:29

Actually it was *you* who said it was Vorderman in the comment I was replying too.

Regardless, we are still in the strange world where opinion counts as evidence. There's no denying that there are many other people prominent in maths education who share Boaler's ideology. The fact remains that her work falls far short of of being good empirical evidence, even if some of her admirers have celebrity endorsement.

But then I can never get you to put forward any kind of clear principle as to what counts as evidence, even when you are attacking other people for referring to evidence that you claim doesn't count.

As for the TES article, I am the last person in the world to object to anonymity in opinion pieces. The issue is that you linked to it as an article providing support for your views. If, in fact, you wrote it, you should be able to see the cloud it casts on your integrity. So, again, can you confirm that you did not write it? Your evasions simply make it look like you did..

Allan Beavis's picture
Tue, 16/10/2012 - 14:53

Andrew -

If this is yet another of your Spanish-style inquisitions directed at Janet Downs, I suggest you think about your own integrity and give less evidence of the type of creepy bullying Jo Boaler has been complaning about!


Pages

Add new comment

Already a member? Click here to log in before you comment. Or register with us.