Some parents become anxious about mixed ability classes. In a subject like maths, which is both a “core” subject and has a reputation for being a subject that people either do or don’t get, these anxieties are aggravated. The parents will either feel that their child is being overly or underly stretched.
Mixed ability classes, though, are repeatedly found to be associated with higher achievement. Jo Boaler comments that the 5 most important reasons for this are:
- “opportunity to learn” – teachers routinely underestimate the abilities of those children in lower sets.
- “high level discussions” – research has found that while high achievers are unaffected by talking to low achievers, the low achievers are boosted hugely by engaging in more “sophisticated” discussions about the concepts they are learning.
- “student differences” – mixed ability classes mean that teachers have to open the subject, making it accessible to children with different needs. Streaming, by contrast, tends to push teachers down the slippery slope of assuming all the children in the set they are teaching have the same needs. As a result, individuals in a streamed set are more poorly served
- “borderline casualties” – children who miss out on the top set by one get rough treatment. Expectations are lower than they should be and the child begins to underperform.
- “student teachers” – possibly the biggest bonus of mixed ability is that students begin to teach each other. Not only doe this mean the teacher is no longer the only source of affirmation, but those better achieving children who explain things find their own performance improving dramatically,