Schools would not use setting or streaming in an ideal world, one of the leading voices in education research has said.
Becky Francis, director of the UCL Institute of Education, led a landmark project which last year raised serious concerns about the effect of grouping pupils by attainment on disadvantaged pupils and those from ethnic minorities.
Last night, at event in London, she launched a pledge for teachers to take, committing themselves to reflect on how their school groups pupils.
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A fellow academic asked her whether, despite the evidence about the impact of attainment grouping, “the best we can hope for is mitigating the damage through best practices in setting?”
Prof Francis told the audience that this was “the key question”.
She added: “Obviously in an ideal world we would have mixed-attainment grouping across the board.
“I would want to suggest that often within a school it’s really surprising how teachers in certain subject areas will look at you and say you are utterly mad to suggest the possibility of mixed attainment grouping, when actually the department next door - history or whatever - are always teaching in mixed-attainment practice. So there is a lot we can learn within school.”
She singled out streaming, where pupils are put in the same group for all or most of their subjects, as “doing more damage” than setting, where pupils are put in different groups for different subjects.
The pledge, launched last night, commits teachers to using research evidence to reflect on the grouping practices in their school, and to “start a conversation about grouping practices with colleagues”.
Prof Francis told Tes this was the first time she was aware of academics using tactics like this to encourage classroom teachers to make use of their research findings.
“What I would like to happen is for people to have the conversation in relation to our findings about the inequitable practices that are taking place through attainment grouping, be that streaming or setting, to think how things could be improved: is this something that can be done by tweaks and improvements to existing practice, or does there need to be wholesale change?” she said.
Prof Francis described the pledge as “a bit of an experiment”. “The test for me is whether it takes off and has a life of its own and is owned by teachers,” she said.
