197. Is Setting In Maths Actually A Good Thing?

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of TC repeat. My name is Dylan and my name is Hayden, and this week we're going to be diving into some more research that appeared ruffle a few feathers. We're going to be talking about what seems to be going against 10 years, 20 years, 30 years of advice around setting in maths, mixed ability sets, streaming and setting by attainment. We're going to be talking about it all because for most of my career, and I think you can attest this, Hayden, we were told that it's pretty much settled, we should be doing mixed ability teaching when it comes to maths. I feel like many teachers think that even if there are some pros to that, the actual doing of it every single day, the practicalities around it can be quite tricky for a number of reasons we'll get into.

0:47 But there was a recent study that was released. Do you want to fill us in Hayden on what was said? Yeah, absolutely. And before I do that, I'm going to preface this episode because I can imagine a little offender me a fendometer on on the on the bottom of this, because you've already said mixed ability instead of mixed attainment twice then. And I think people might be might be seriously questioning whether they can listen to this episode now. OK, all right, that's OK. So if anyone has a massive problem with the word ability, please get over it for this entire discussion. And and do you know what that that that maybe that's provocative as well. My point here is that very clearly everyone knows what we're talking about when we say ability. Mixed ability is a very common way of describing a group that has mixed ability in it.

1:29 In terms of the lesson we're talking about, we're not talking about the child as a whole. We're not saying inherently they're less or more able of absolutely everything ever. But the fact of the matter is that there are children who are more and less able when it comes to maths and when people go, well, someone said, oh, you can't, Ability is is stuck. You can't become more or less able at something. Yes you can. Yeah, of course you can, unless you choose to define it the way that you're choosing and. Then. So then it's just inherent, is it? And then we really are talking about eugenics that you can't meet. Of course you can move your ability in something. You can increase your ability to do something. Yeah, my ability to run has increased when I trained to do some more running. And mine, mine has decreased significantly continuously since I was seven.

2:09 Yeah, it's not offensive when you just know. Exactly. No, actually it's your attainment. We should be measuring your okay running attainment. Whatever you whatever you think the right word is. Imagine I'm saying that. That's what I mean. I mean that I'm talking. Yeah, I don't. I don't inherently think horrible things about children or think terrible. I don't. A fendometer. Not what we're saying, anyway. Yeah, this new study. Go on, Hayden, Tell us about it. Cool. So this the study came out. Dylan's also not reel on this, so check it out on our Instagram as well. And equally provocative. To teach the repeat podcast. Thank you for that clarification. The most important bit probably of pointing people towards our Instagram. Anyway, it's think with that in mind. You know what? You've literally absorbed this more and you've done a whole real life. You might as well summarise.

2:49 Stop. That's what I wanted you to say, right? Hayden? Why don't you say it? I'm just lazy. Well, essentially it came out. It's the EEF, EF Education Endowment Fund. They fund a lot of research to do education and a lot of the things that you would have heard third of your career in in education has probably come from from this as well. And they've said, oh, it's backed by this. It's it's proper, it's this, it's that. And essentially what it said was it talked about how children and OK, OK, lower attaining children very good aren't negatively impacted when it comes to setting. However, those with higher attaining outcomes can flourish and make more progress in a setting environment. For the sake of just in case you have listeners who are not necessarily up to scratch with the jargon of of teaching, can you just very quickly explain what setting actually is complete that work?

3:37 Yeah, so all we mean here is with mixed ability, mixed attainment. Sorry. What you have is you have a classroom that's just simply based on when children were born. Yeah. OK. So from September one year to August the next, all of those children are in a class of maths, and you just teach all of them. And it doesn't matter what their attainment is in maths. It doesn't matter how much they understand, it doesn't matter where they are, they should all be taught the same lesson. That would be mixed and it would be down to what you teach them, what we'll talk about this in the future about differentiation and the things you give them and the support you give them and the help that together is the point. They're all together and they will have varying ability. OK Then with setting, what happens is you in some way figure out what their attainment is in maths and then group them according to that and it can look, it can look very, very different.

4:18 It can look vastly different. You might just have some setting where the children need the most support or in a smaller group and the rest are mixed. You might have just some setting where the children who are gifted and talented are just together and they push each other on and they and they're in a group and everyone else is mixed. You might have setting which is straight up, you almost list them in order based on an attainment scale that you have, based on whatever you want to do to find the information out. And then you just cut them up into quarters and there's four classes. Yeah, whatever it can be. Setting it takes into account the attainment and the ability of the child in that in that lesson. Which is where we get the term sets. You know, when we say, oh, you're in set one. When I was at secondary school, it was set one, set two, set 3. Because you have, you have the highest set, the lower set. And you have all these words that offend people as well. Yeah. And we probably use throughout this, you know, in terms of like higher ability, higher children, most able, more able. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, please, please understand. Please give us, please give us the respect of understanding that you know what we're talking about. Please just think for more than 10 seconds. Other than what I don't like what said, all of these people must be awful.

5:12 We're not awful people. Just think about what we're saying, please. For more than 5 seconds anyway. The findings were in general were pupils in mixed attainment classes are about made about one month less progress in maths on average than pupils in sets. So that's straight across the board. In average pupils make less progress in mixed attainment classes. High prior retainers made about two months less progress in mixed attainment classes. So it it gives those children who are more capable with maths make far less progress when they're in mixed ability. And that makes sense, right? That's just something teachers have said for years that has always been batted off that they're held back. Yeah, they are held back. They have to be because it's just a practicality of teaching a mixed ability class. Yeah, surely. Surely low prior retainers and pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds made similar progress in either model setting did not significantly harm them, right? This, this is the key here because again, I've had some people push back and say, well this doesn't say it's better for lower retainers.

6:06 No it doesn't, it's the same, it's the same. So if we have the option of it staying the same but it's better for a different group then that's obviously maybe potentially something that's useful for the whole class as a whole. This. This was the kicker for me. self-confidence in maths was slightly worse in mixed attainment schools than in setting schools. It's a small effect overall but I can't tell you how much of my career people have told me that if you set it ruins the confidence of children. This study has found the opposite, that when children are in mixed ability classes, what a shock they see other children who can do things they can't and become less confident. So that that for me was another just a bit of vindication. I think for all those teachers out there have been saying it for years that this is not the case.

6:48 So the EEF had these basic recommendations, which I think were a really good place to land. And it said if you set and if you teach mixed attainment. So it wasn't saying you should definitely do one if you want to make that clear to people. Now, the point of this is that both can work. And those people who spent the whole Caribbean on their high horse saying that setting is disgusting. We even had a quote later on that we'll talk about it being it's violence against. It's clearly none of that is a case of both. If you set, do not concentrate specialist teachers into the top sets and let pupils move between those sets and have fluidity. If you teach mixed attainment, you have to actively stretch those high attainers because that's where the gap is open. Yeah. So again, just one extra line that backs this as well. Something they found was that the lesson observations showed that mixed attainment classes were teaching content closer to what the quote bottom sets get.

7:36 You know what I mean? The lower attaining sets get than what the high attaining sets get. So it completely backs up everything you said before that all like the all the teachers that have been saying this for years. I've been saying this for years of like, oh, if you've, if I've got the entire range of of attainment in this class, it's, it's really hard for me to do what I would have done if I only had the top 25% of attainers. Or only the only the bottom right. OK, actually, I think you'll find, Hayden, that a rising tide raises all boats. Yeah. OK. I think you'll find that actually if we just have really high standards, which clearly you don't if you want to set. All right, you're just putting a ceiling on those children. OK. So I think actually you'll find that a rising tide raise all boats. Love analogies that just sound kind of cool. I don't really mean anything.

8:19 I love them. I love them. Yeah. I'm inspired by that. Yeah, actually true. I know I'm still in front of a class right now where I'm really struggling to make, but someone mentioned the tide getting higher and bloody. That is how bloody water. Works. I I you know what, it must be the case. How waterworks really does reflect how old children learn. I want to, I really do just want to just make the point here that what I am saying, my baseline is not now this research says that settings better. So we should all just what I'm saying here is that those people who are genuine. I LED maths in school, I did maths specialist, these courses, I still thought setting had its place. There were people out there who was edged on it, had on the side of snobbery who if they heard the word setting, blood jump, not being trained in maths. I don't think you understand maths mastery mate. We do it all at the same time.

9:05 Absolute utter nonsense. There is a place for setting, there is a place for mixed ability. Both have their pros, both have their places and both can be really successful. And you know, we'll come, we'll circle back round to this. But if you have issues with maths in your school, it's probably because of other things. It's not necessarily because of the way you're setting or doing stability. Definitely. There are a lot of factors that are. Implying that hopefully will be the theme that comes through this episode as we explore it deeper and deeper and deeper and look into the whys. So let's just, let's just dive a little bit more into our own experiences because I think it's important, right? Because I equally spent the entirety of my career and I think other people did as well. Even if I think I could have been working in teacher for 20 years and I could have spent the entirety of that time thinking mixed attainment is on this pedestal and is the best way of doing it.

9:49 If you set well, you might just be a bit lazy. Maybe you don't do the work. It's it is just worse for the children, like as if there is no overlap whatsoever. And I think that's what that is like you said, that's what this new research challenges. I don't want to fall victim. I'm sure a lot of people will. And I definitely started to do it. And I first read the article of like, ha ha, you were all wrong. It's actually, it's actually insert the complete opposite and it's just not true. Like you said like and I would say it again, the EEF recommendations were if you set do this, if you do mixed ability do this. The recommendations weren't everybody now stopped doing mixed ability. We were totally wrong for the last 25 years. Actually, we got it all completely wrong.

10:29 All the old research is now redundant and in void. This new one piece of research tells us how to do it this way. It's like, what are the chances that will change in 25 years? And. This is this is exactly what I'm leaning into. Those people have seen research before and said, therefore always it's bad. It's like I'm saying the same thing. Like clearly it's not. And clearly now I don't think those people who've been championing mixed stability for 25 years will read this and be like, I'll drop that, then I'll move. No, no, because exactly that. Therefore their own preconceptions of what's right and wrong and they're going to go along with it. And if you look at the history of the research, right, this, we're not saying there wasn't research that said mixed ability was great or better or that setting maybe had no impact or maybe even low retainers were worse. We had this in the past, which is where this has come from. It's usually come from a good place of people seeing research and going, actually it does say this.

11:12 So let's do that. I think we just have to really just bake in here that the experience of hundreds of thousands of teachers doing it every single day is not automatically trumped by a research paper. A research paper can be really helpful. It can be really useful. You've got to look at the methodologies, you've got to look at the outcomes. You've got to look at who's doing it. You've got to look at why they're doing it. There's there's so many different things that that come into effect when you're interpreting research that clearly you cannot just look at the headline and be like, OK, I'm doing that now. Of course not. There is even like some like going to the NTH degree of this. There's some really hard limitations which just make the whole thing hilarious, like when people just take the research, well, this is the only way to do it now. Like the research typically understandably fails to understand, fails to include the context of every human ever.

11:55 Like this research had some internal context. It was, it was it was done in a secondary school year 7 to 8. There was a certain amount of pupils over a certain time period. There's always going to be limitations and bias, right. So, yeah, when that when that one form entry primary school is looking at this research that now that and and they're thinking it says, oh, we have to set, but I can't. Yeah, of course you can't. Of course you can't. There's situations where you literally can't set, and there are probably situations where it's incredibly easier to have sets than it would be to do mixed ability just based on the context of your score. And I think you just have to have that in your mind all the time when interpreting this. Stuff and the outcomes of the children is not rooted only in what you choose to have these two things. There's so many other things that if you want to improve the outcomes of your maths teaching in school, it's not as simple as just going latest research paper, mixed ability, latest research paper set the quality of teaching, who's where, who's doing what.

12:48 There's just so much more to it, you know, home involvement, etcetera. So I guess the point here is that, you know, throughout my career is definitely definitely been the entire time of my career. It's been, you know, it's been looked upon as mixed abilities, better mixed. Get everyone in the same classroom and you just differentiate. Yeah. And you just get, you know, give them opportunities to stretch themselves or not. Clearly that's have a limiting factor with children who are high, high retainers. And it's nice to see that, you know, it's not automatically you're doing a disservice to your low retainers. Yeah. Because I've set for my whole career, OK. And I, for the vast majority of my career have been with those low retaining sets, OK. And I have loved every second and I have not believed it when people have said to me, therefore confidence is worse in those kids.

13:29 I've the confidence if if anything, I'm not even just saying this because maths is my passion and because I agree you have to have strong maths teachers across the board. If anything, with those lower attainers, I was with those lower attainers, I LED maths in the school. I love maths. I, I, I bred this whole series of just confidence and love for the subject. The kids were getting way more than if they were in a mixed ability. Sure, and and it doesn't mean they couldn't have got it in a mixed ability, but what it does mean is that you can still get it from sets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if someone came into your classroom with that on that high horse, right, and had said to you at that time, Oh no, no, no, no, this isn't any good like setting is bad. Actually the the confidence of the children in this, in this class, you might not know it, Mr. Price, but the confidence of the children in this class is actually being completely diminished.

14:11 Yeah, exactly that that that's when I think that becomes this animosity towards the research. And that's when you brought up and you're just like, you know, you don't know anything. Yeah, you're right. And it comes from an understanding, a broad understanding. To be fair, from the same from the teachers have to understand that research is generic. It doesn't mean that every single time that what is said in the research happens, it has to be that way. There's always going to be some anecdotal evidence either side. It's a generic trend, but clearly those trends are different based on who's looking at what A. 100% and at the end of the day, I will just finish this whole talk about research by saying that this new research has come out really like in essence, it has been done by the same team who are who have originally researched and brought out all this other evidence to say that the complete opposite. You know that like, so you just have to take it with a pinch of salt and, and it's not even unfair to say that that's kind of the point of research.

14:57 We, we like, we do as humans, we do learn new things and change and adapt over time. It's that doesn't mean inherently that research is now bad because it contradicted itself from 25 years ago. That kind of is the nature of things a lot of the time. And with that in mind, you just have to accept that maybe, maybe if you are on that high horse of this is the only way to do it. You might have been wrong that that was the only way of of doing it. And this research. And if you are, if you are so hard on the research backing up before, yeah. And now this new research by the same people has come out saying something opposite. You kind of have to jump off your high horse and just accept, OK, you know what? Maybe I'll do it that. Bit or stay in your high horse and just move to now the must do setting. The opposite now. Stay in your high horse. Yeah, Yeah, at least you're consistent now, I suppose. That's that's true. That's true.

15:37 And it's nothing to do with your practise or experience in the classroom. It's only to do with the the paper that you read. I think what we should do is go into setting and having mixed ability classes and just look at, you know, the case for each one. So I think you should start with setting because I think I don't know you and I both, you know, we both LED master in school. I know our opinions have always been setting is good, Yeah, it can be done well, it can be done bad. And we've never said that mixed stability is bad. No, never really clear, never. But we've always said it has limitations. Yeah, and there's been limitations in our setting, but not automatically. Doesn't mean that we should therefore do mixed stability, because I think there's more. Limitation in the context of our careers and the schools we have worked in, we have always, we have always come to the conclusion that some sort of setting has been a good conclusion.

16:18 That's basically the way we can say it, isn't it? Yeah, right. OK, so we're gonna we're gonna go through a few here. I think this is really, really interesting. So in terms of just pedagogical precision, right? So you can tailor your pace, your depth, your language to a narrower band of prior attainment. So with the top set you can push, you know, really, really push that abstract level. If you think about a lot of training and mass concrete pictorial abstract to journey through. If you're, if you get children in the same room who are very much towards the end of that, you can push way more into that abstract than that deeper understanding because we've already made that journey. So if we can already take advantage of that, it means we can jump faster, we can assume more, we can get kids further. Here's a good example. I have been, I was saying 6 for a long time. And I have taught a variety of different attainment sets, some more mixed than others. Because again, by the nature of it, you've got to remember by the way, that even when you have sets, you still have loads of children in a class.

17:06 And there's obviously going to be a range still. So there's still some sort of mixing, right? And I've taught the same objectives at the same point of the year to different attainment sets. And I felt like I've made the best progress I can in, in both holistically confidence and actual attainment with each of those sets. And I've taught wildly differently in terms of my approach to the lesson that even sometimes the, the, the layers of content, like you said, the depth that I go into. And I've come to the conclusion after that of thinking, if I had to do both of those at the same time, neither of those groups would have got the, the depth and like precision that I gave them. And that simply it was the truth of it. I just physically I can't be two people and I can't talk to two groups of people at the same time without all overlapping sounding ridiculous Exactly. So I would have had to have compromised somewhere. So I think that's a very strong argument for setting is you are by definition, if you are the same teacher in this, someone might argue and say, but if you've got a weaker teacher, okay, you've added another variable. If I'm the teacher in all these examples, I will be able to deliver more depth and breadth if I have a much tighter focus with the with the curriculum.

18:09 And there's still going to be a breadth there. We're not putting a ceiling on anyone. What we're doing is increasing the probability that the breadth of knowledge and understanding is smaller. So I can target it more, but more more effectively. When I've had classes lower attaining classes before, there have been some children in that class who are probably in that, in that, in that, in that small step we're doing that day. Or maybe even that whole strand that we're doing can achieve better than some children in the set which we say is higher set, right? It doesn't. So doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because my breadth is so much smaller. I'm not going to the highest, but the highest echelon of that set anymore. It just means it overlaps a bit. It's still more narrow for me as a teacher to focus on. When you're with those foundation sets, you can really slow down, you can give them exactly what they need. I could hit those gaps so much more perfectly because they were in the same kind of area.

18:58 And you're right doing both. It's just, it's just unrealistic, I think. And, and I think what was good about the research was that it just showed that there was a minimal effect on lower retainers and a bigger effect on higher retainers if they managed to go and set. That makes sense to me because realistically, if you have a mixed class and you are delivering a lesson to all 32 children naturally, and I don't care, you can say all you want, all your metaphors about tides, riding boats, Naturally, if you don't want to alienate 1/3 of that class, you have to be giving that input at a lower level and therefore just hoping that the tops or the highs stretch themselves. You have to be doing that. Otherwise you're basically saying I'll leave you behind. Maybe that's where, you know, if we think about mixed ability classes and if it's had a detriment, A detrimental impact on those lower retainers, maybe that's why because we're leaving them behind, right?

19:47 And it comes again into the quality of teaching. There is way much more to be said about the quality of teaching. But inherently if you mixed, I just think it's harder to do that. And you can talk about stretching people, etcetera. And making sure that you know, if you do set with lower attainers, how can you make sure that they don't have a ceiling on them comes down to your quality of teaching. Definitely. I think a lot of this and I think some of the criticisms we'll get to when we, when we talk about the pros for mixed ability, a lot of this will link back to I think some of the things we're saying right now. And I do think it links to like the quality of teaching that what, what you're able to do. And one other thing I'll say as well about the whole like mixed ability, having your highest attainers and your lowest attainers in one place. A lot of people will say the gap is smaller in the classroom, and I find that I've always found that really fascinating.

20:29 What do you mean? The gap, they'll say, the gap between your highest attain and your lowest attain and the mixed stability set is a is a smaller gap than it would be if you taught them in separate attainment sets. And therefore they say, and therefore that's a good. Thing as if the size of the gap is the thing that matters. And, and yeah, and they always fail to look at the only thing that actually matters, which is OK, but if we're comparing those things, we just need to compare the higher attainers to where they would have been in the mixed stability set to where they are in the other set and the lower attainers to the in the mixed stability set and the non, because that's the thing that matters. And yeah, the gap might be bigger, but like, OK, you got a, you got a. So imagine a a very small gap, but it's it's much lower down in average attainment. Let's give it numbers quick. Let's go now. So let's just say arbitrary lines. Let's just say.

21:10 So let's just say 3 out of 10 is where your lower retainers are and they and then your higher retainers are at 7 out of 10. Yeah, OK. So you've got a gap of four. And in this other example, your lower retainers, they're still at 3 out of 10. So they've not got worse or better. It's ah, that's frustrating. It's no different. They're still at 3 out of 10, but your higher attainers are at 9 out of 10. Now there's a gap of. Six much bigger gap much. Worse, the gap has increased. And you look at the gap, you think, oh, the gaps increased, that's bad, but it's not, is it? Yeah, it's not bad, right? And that's what you're saying? In that situation, it's not bad. It would be bad if it was the other way around. If you had the gap of four, it was three and seven, and then the gap was one and seven, right? OK, cool. There's no benefit to anyone. In fact, there's only a decrease that that's a bad gap. And I think the context of the gap is important, but no one ever does it.

21:52 And everyone just says, well, we've reduced the gap, so that's good. So it's not good if it's at the detriment of 1/3 of. Your class I've had, I mean, is this conversation? Yeah, I remember this conversation so much where we we, I vividly remember this is this literally happened, right? We looked at data of the gap between pupil premium and non pupil premium from the year before. And then we looked at the gap now and the gap had decreased. It got smaller, right? Everyone given themselves pat on the backs. We've decreased this gap. Looking at the raw data, both were lower, both were lower. It was just that, it was just that the higher retaining that, sorry, the the one that was higher had dropped more, right? So the gap had become smaller and squeezed down or the gap smaller. Everyone's down though, everyone's lower.

22:34 Yeah, but Pat on the back, Sir. Yeah, Yeah. We've got to close that pupil premium gap. And then if you looked at the like the tables we'd look at it would say pupil premium gap percentage and it would go 8%, four point 4%. That's good. What? Yeah, no, it's not Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's just so simplistic, we. Get so obsessed as teachers with certain metrics. That gap, kind of a gap, Yeah. Well, do you know what do you know? Do you know what I'm going to say? It might be controversial. We can have a gap. Yeah. We obviously can have a gap. Yeah. What are you aiming for in life if you don't want a gap of anything ever? We'll never have any extremities. We'll never have any amazing people at different things. Oh, but I'm so jealous because the other people are just saying the lower, the lower. I'm going to make sure everyone is the same.

23:15 No, we don't get better at something else. We should be. We should be nurturing those higher, those children who are better at something, who have a passion about something, who want to improve. It doesn't mean we don't help other people improve. It just means that it's good to celebrate people who are exceptional at things. And we have this whole mindset of no, they can't make the gap higher. Yeah, we can. We can absolutely make the gap higher because the context of the gap matters. Does it mean every single instance of a widening gap is a good thing? Obviously not. But does it mean every single an instance of a gap widening is a bad thing? Also dead brain behaviour? Of course, that's not true. Exactly your your example there was an example of a gap decreasing, but it was universally worse for everybody involved, right so.

23:58 And then initially we had an example of a gap increasing. Yeah, that wasn't better for everyone, but it wasn't worse for anyone. No, like it was not worse. It was the same. And some people push back on the reel and they were like, I don't see any evidence here of why it's better for lower retainers. No, there wasn't any. That's why it remained the same. There was no impact. It was the same. Do we, are we that obsessed with any kind of positive that has to be positive for everyone always? Yeah, Yeah. What obviously out of these two things? Oh, typical high achievers getting more. As always, once you're there, you're there, OK? All right, let's be real. Money makes money, baby. How much? How long did you spend in school? 10 years. 11 years. Right. OK. Is it typical that the high retainers get everything? No, it's massively skewed.

24:41 I'm not saying it shouldn't be. No children, children from lower socio and economic backgrounds get people premium funding and extra money in place for it. All of the, all of the, all of the pressure and, and the move towards is to getting people past entertainment level from the bottom up. Everything that schools do is about that. Yeah, the 90%, the the children, the children who are higher achievers are forgotten. Yeah, of course they are. They've got that's my .0, the tops getting more again. The tops never get anything. They never get anything and and they should get less. Don't. This is it. They should get less. They don't need as much support, right? In terms of the I'm talking about a difference now between a child who can't read and a child who can. The children who can't read should get more than the children who can, whether they can read veraciously or or just about right. But why do we pretend that that individual child is not deserving of attention?

25:28 I agree. Is not deserving of pushing. It's not deserving of getting the highest they can get. Because then oh, if they get the highest they can get, the gap increases and the school looks bad. Get over it. Change your outlook because those kids deserve it as much as anyone to get input and help. It's because, and I'll say this now, and I hope if you're listening to this, you will either reluctantly agree or agree passionately, it's because we have been totally, totally brainwashed in education to believe this fact. Progress only matters when it crosses A threshold. That's it. You're already over the top threshold, kid. Cool. Do not care about your progress anymore. It's 0 progress technically because you've gone from expected to expected, right? You, you could have made 15 progress points individually of how you're doing, but it's, it's still in the band of expected. So it means nothing to me.

26:13 A different child could have made 2 progress points, 2 percentage points, but they tip over that expected band. That is more useful in terms of a school's outlet and how it hooks and is perceived from the outside. That gives you a boost, a move, Absolutely. That two percentage point move is more beneficial to a school than a 15 percentage point move for someone else. And it is horrendous. I wonder how many school I'd be really interested to know this because I don't want to base it off my own experience because it's just too small of a pool of information. I wonder how many schools are still doing things like gifted and talented groups. Remember when I started training also when I was at school the whole term gifted and talented. And maybe it's got to refresh that term now and I'm just not whatever. But if that groups still exist, right?

26:53 I wonder how many schools are still doing things while they actively go out of the way to say this child or these children are like particularly talented in this subject and we're going to do something extra to like really try and like push it even further. I remember you've done quite a few talented groups. Last year, because it was and it always seemed to be Term 1 where we know we're, we're finding out where the children are, we're getting a bit more data, etcetera. Time 1, I do a gifted and talented group where children who just exceptional about maths, there was just six of them and me and we'd do some, we, we would do whatever we wanted, you know what I mean? Like I'd watch some #5 videos and get some ideas about investigations and I'd give these kids just some open-ended questions where we'd explore different things. We did so much, it was so fun and the kids got so much out of it. And it wasn't about testing at the start and the end wasn't about moving.

27:34 It was just about saying your exception on maths, let's push you, let's do some unbelievable things. It's so fun. And then after time too, I was literally told I can't really measure this though, can't really measure this. So. So can you start doing some groups people with with children who we've seen are on the cusp of expecting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like, you know what, those kids do need input and help, right? Yeah. But it's always, always, always at the detriment of the other children. And I just, I just feel bad for them because I'm not being funny. I'm not being like boastful any. I was that I was that kid at school. I was obsessed with maths. I loved it was my thing. That's what I loved doing and I always felt like I was given opportunities to push it, to push it and it felt good. And if there's any child out there who's getting this idea of being squashed, oh, no, no, sorry, no, no, no, no.

28:15 This me to me to put all our help over here. You just get you crack on, you're fine. Just do. Just do your worksheet. That's sad to me. It's sad. I, I just remembered you saying that sort of reminded me. I thought about this for years. You might have done the same because you only. So Dylan and I went to the same secondary school and Dylan was one year below me. So there's a good chance that things that were in place for me are probably in place for you as well. I don't know if you did this or not, but I think, I think I was in year 7. Maybe you're 8. And there was like a, they picked the top 10 mathematicians of the year to go and do like some origami paper folding thing. And it was all like mathematical folding. I don't know if your year group did. That no, what I did was they had to pick one male and one female, the best mathematicians, and we did a math Olympiad. That's why I did. Yeah. Oh, you're the top one. I was I. Was top ten.

28:56 Yeah, yeah. I mean, me and Jodie, we went off, we did it. Very nice. Yeah, but like wasn't. But you remember that I loved that because maths was also my favourite subject. And it is kind of sad to me the idea that I, there's a reality now. I could go through school and just none of that enrichment happened to me because I, because I am already greater depth. Okay, this kids going to get the predicted grade that we want. Like let's just just leave them. Let's focus on these again. It's I don't know what the solution is because obviously we need to focus on those other kids. I'm not saying we don't now focus on the other kids. But that it's a symptom of of diminishing budgets as well. Yeah, less and less and less money. What's going to go first? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Our scope of focus gets smaller and smaller and smaller. At the end of the day, it's sort of like, OK, if you've got to pick, am I going to pick the child who's confident and already does maths or am I going to pick the child who I might be able to make a difference for? And they can, they can understand the fundamentals now do.

29:42 You know what? Do you know what probably do you know what winds me up? This is the problem. We're kind of going off a bit tangent here, but it's good. This is what winds me up with the obsession with the line. You know, I talked about that. Two percentage point gets over the line, 15 percentage point doesn't. Sure. If we actually, if we actually do what you just said, which is to build the confidence of the children at the lowest level who can't do it. Think about children who can't read. Yeah, think about children who can't do their number ones to 10 or can't aren't properly sabotizing or can't count properly. Right. Children who we deem realistically and though the schools will deem them as we can put as much time as we want, but they're not going to. Get passed. This is exactly what I'm saying now this is exactly what I mean where if we were actually thinking about the foundations and and thinking about where it should be going and like, oh, do you know what? Fair enough. Kids who can't read should get more support, right? We're not talking about them. There's no child in the world who is just below expected level of reading who could tip into expected level of reading who can't already read well and understand the text. They're already past that point.

30:31 This is the arbitrariness of this, what we're talking about here. It's just this line that we said. We're not helping kids read who couldn't read. We're leaving them behind. We're not even doing that. We're doing the only thing that ends up making schools league tables look better. It's like the worst middle ground isn't, It's the worst. So we're being forced and now are our focus. And then in doing that, we've this now limited focus. We're doing it in the wrong place. Exactly. It's like the worst of both worlds are not we've we're not doing these things with these given talented children. OK, we can go over that, but we're also not even helping with this narrowed focus. The the lowest of able children who will need this help the most. And do you know what I think this does? Do you know what I think that genuinely doesn't? It's what I've always thought in my whole career. That explains why setting works. Explain what you mean. Because now those children who have been forgotten in the mixed cannot be forgotten because they're the only ones in the class.

31:15 Yeah, we have a foundation group of children who are learning to read together. Still. True, True. We have a group of children who are almost gifted and talented. Fantastic maths. I can only stretch them. They can do this stuff. It's fantastic. I can only give them my full attention. And then we give those children exactly what they need because it's a more of a narrow focus. It forces it. It's a good point. So I just think that's one or more benefit of, of sets. I mean, we can. As I say, it brings us nicely back to what we were doing, which was just talking about if we're, if we're really trying to argue the case for setting, that would be one of those points. I think so confident I'll read through this one quickly because we kind of touched on it. Confidence is another one. And the reason it's in here now is because that that study showed that actually it didn't, it didn't negatively impact the confidence so badly that this the, the setting is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to children. It did the opposite.

31:59 Like it actually really, really, really challenged that and said, I actually know the confidence was better when when we sat. Doesn't mean it's always the case, right? But it does back up our experience as teachers and probably thousands of listeners right now who are also thinking, oh, I'm also a really competent, passionate maths teacher. And whenever I've been in any set, whether it's mixed or not, the confidence of the children increases because that's what I bring to the table as a teacher. And and also it just it just inherently. I've always thought this inherently, if, if you have a base level of you're doing nothing for confidence, right? I do think that inherently if you have mixed ability and you're not paying any effort into that confidence and you have a set and you're not paying any effort into that confidence, the confidence of the children, the mixed ability will be worse because they're seeing other children be able to do stuff that they really struggle with.

32:39 By definition, that's going to knock their confidence. Whereas if they're in a targeted group and they just have a couple become more normal for them, it'll be all getting support here. It it, it, it was nonsense to me and it's just, that's the part that frustrates me. I agree. I always feel like when people when I have had debates and arguments about mixed ability or not, but I feel like they always go to this like level of completely unrealistic like assumptions where they think because I'm doing setting, that means what I'm going to do is I'm going to put hats on all the children and say you're in set. Everyone needs to know you're in set 2. And by the way, kids, set 2 is the worst one. Let's make sure we all know it. Like, no one's doing that. I know no one's doing that. Especially in primary, it's easier to isolate and and and also, But this is the thing.

33:22 Kids can understand that and know that, right? They also can understand and know that in a mixed ability class, because oh that's weird, We're all on the rectangle table and the rectangle table gets a teaching assistant every single day and a different sheet to everyone. Else, oh, no deal. And we don't even do that. We just completely mix up the children where they are in the classroom. Cool. Now that's the child that can do the other worksheet you've given them because in your mixed ability, you say you've differentiated. It's rated three ways and they've got this sheet and they've got that one. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. Why have I got a different sheet? Oh, well, this has happened before to me. Why have I got a different sheet? OK, well, I'm obviously not going to say to you right now because you are not of a certain level of attainment. That means you can do it. Yeah. But I also like, you're not stupid. I can't lie to you. What do you I end up saying?

34:02 Oh, it's we're doing the same thing. Just you might get a little bit of help. Yeah. Even me saying that means that they know they're getting more help now. Like like I I don't feel like I can answer that question truthfully. It's so true. Do you know what that exam? Because that's happened to be loads of hands as well. The the situation where a child has asked me why they've got a different sheet of someone else has cringed me out so much more to the point where like that alone was enough to make me think. I would rather they were just in a group where everyone got this sheet and there was no, no, they didn't know any different. Well, they just put them on tables all together. So they've all got the sheet together, that setting, that setting and it's setting without different input. Yeah, which the worst of both worlds. We do mixed ability classes, but we just have each table as a set. Yeah, right. OK, So you you are doing the setting and then then you're giving them one input instead of.

34:47 If you did setting, you'd have three or four different inputs at the level that they need. I think, I think people that are still champions of own, like mixed ability is the only way to go and there's no place for setting. I think they need to go to the next level. I think they need to in their school. They need to say we're going to get rid of year groups. They have to. It's the only logical conclusion. We don't set by year. We don't say that just when a child is born determines their ability or not. So we have a completely fluid system. I think that's the only logical conclusion. Just get them all in and every every single day, but boom, split up into 30s. Yeah, you're doing long multiplication today. I'm I'm full and I can't add it's don't you know all mixed ability is better? Oh dear, you're so naive. We don't split up the 30s, we teach the entire school at once and we just differentiate 18 ways because everyone is learning place value at the same time.

35:34 Yeah, across our school. True, true. So there's no reason why they can't all be in the same room. Because I don't want some of the children to realise that they're not as capable as others. Year 5 and I'm in year 40. They're older. Yeah, they're older. Oh, we just. Yeah, we do just set them by year group and then maybe we just go slightly deeper than that. We do our tables and pretend it's. No, the line is exactly where it is Hayden right now, which is that we set by year group and then we don't do any more setting at all. And that happens to be we set, we set by age, which is the best way to set. And then we don't set by attainment, which is awful. Oh, I I I I reckon. I reckon setting by age is a worse way to set children than attainment is. Definitely, of course, I definitely taught children by year six who who are significantly significantly of of different attainment to the other children in that class. We're talking years worth of gaps where really just putting you in the classroom because they're in that year group was actually probably the worst way.

36:26 If we're going to do sets to do that genuinely, genuinely that that is actually not where they need to be. Yeah. And I think this just sums it up here in terms of I think for years and years and years. This new study suggests that the headline of harm to the low attainers, which seems to be the one that's banned about a lot as to why they don't do it. We don't harm the low attainers. It it feels like it might not be the actual truth all of the time to the extent where it can really affect you as a school. I think we just have to look at this and just go, OK, look, there's mixed research that we can even just say that at this point. There's mixed research here. Let's think about our setting. Let's think about every other aspect to why we might do setting or mixed ability and then make a decision that isn't vilified from one side but is instead rooted in what we think is best for our school.

37:10 Definitely. So here's the fun bit of the podcast episode. Dylan, anyone listening, if you've been vehemently agreeing or disagreeing of parts or complete disagreement ring, the fun bit is we're going to completely switch it up now because now we're going to talk through the pros of mixed ability and I think this is. Oh, it's empty. And even though we clearly have a bias towards the fact that what we've done our whole career is I don't think mixed stability is bad. Of course I don't just in fact, in some situations, I know you're joking. Some situations, I would almost always think mixed stability was the best, the best outcome, like. So let's go now. Now through then some some some points about mixed ability, you can get a. 100 percent, 100%. And you know what, Just just you know, we're going to come on to workload in a second. People might be thinking what about workload? There seems to be obvious answers here why workload might be better or worse in these different situations.

37:52 We'll come on to that. We're really just trying to talk about the actual impact of the children here. So yeah, OK, so the labelling problem we're talking about confidence doesn't go away just because this study didn't pick up on it. And what we're saying here is this was a very specific study. For example, it just looked at maths, it's math specific. self-confidence found a small negative effect in mixed attainment schools. There's a lot of long standing studies out there and research again, leaning into what we said about there's mixed research, right, Of course, right that the longer term self concept, it's more mixed. OK, the headline here is very clear. It says oh it's actually worse confidence when you do mixed. But it was only over 2 years. Exactly. And it was very specific, right. So, so in general, I think that the point we're making here is that we can look at this study and we can jump on a bandwagon and say, Oh yeah, it means this all the time.

38:35 There's a lot of research out there, which is a lot of different, like you said, methodologies, a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different, you know, types of school, etcetera. I don't think you can just pick it up and wear it. I agree. Yeah. If we're going to the the most holistic view we possibly can, which is over the child's entire career in education, like you said, there are plenty of studies that say actually overall though it does have a negative. Impact to to and I can think in secondary school, you know, like we were called, you know, I was in set one, there was set 7, but I'm not being funny. Like you're 14. I'm in set seven. I can imagine very much that had detrimentary. But like you're gonna, you're gonna have your confidence here in different ways, right? Yeah. So that way, it's very, it's very out there. It's very public. You're in set seven, I'm in set one. That's obviously gonna hit you, but your confidence will be hit in a different way.

39:18 There's a mixed ability class. Maybe there's a bit more quiet, maybe a bit more like, you know, introverted way. Oh God, I can see those doing that. I know it's not gonna be a label of set 7 on me, but my confidence might be hit in a different way where actually I see how amazing these people are at maths and I struggle with it. Yeah, potentially. So there's different ways confidence. But that scene is different, isn't it? Because like you said, you kind of alluded to this before. Like there are some topics within maths though, where you might find if you're that set seven person, you might find actually I'm not so bad at this one and I can benchmark that I'm not so bad about this because because in this lesson, the children around me, I feel like I'm doing the same sort of level of work. Like there are opportunities that ceilings removed in mixed ability sets for children within topics fluidly whenever the time arises to show what they're made of rather than just constantly thinking I'm in set 7 therefore I am bad at all maths and the ceilings put on me straight away by the teacher anyway.

40:04 I'm not even going to get to explore potentially how I might actually be good at this this particular area of maths because the teacher has assumed I'm in set seven. I'm not a good so the worksheets already low ability for me. I think we're we're, we're touching a bit into quality of teaching now as well. But but you're right in terms of that's just a reality. This is for me one of the biggest ones. It's misallocation. It's rampant. What we're talking about here is children in the wrong set. Ah, yeah, yeah. OK, So Connolly ETAL 2019 looked over 9000 year sevens and found that 31% of pupils were placed in the wrong set based on look at this, they're key stage 2 scores. So I can see why there's a lot of, you know, looking at this and thinking this is just a very specific, you know, year 7 based on key stage 2 scores. But in general we can see how misallocation can be really problematic.

40:49 Of course we can extrapolate that easily, can't we? To assume there's obviously, obviously it's going to be a problem that sometimes children are going to be in the wrong sets. And and the whole point of setting is it only works if kids in the right place. Yeah. So if they're not in the right place, it's a very obvious counter argument to say, well, setting's not very good then is it in this situation because there are lots of kids who are now not in the right place. Completely and whereas, you know, it's I'm not sure and I know we put this together. I know the joke was that we prefer setting and I do think there's, there's definitely mixed ability is good, but here it feels more like a positive for mixed abilities that some people do setting badly. It's like, oh, kids are misallocated in the wrong place. OK, right. So if we're saying they're misallocated, right? Are they not constantly misallocated if they're in a mixed stability set because they're not even allocated in the 1st place, They're already with the wrong people. We're saying it's a misallocation. That's interesting if it if it's inherently not set at all. No.

41:41 Oh, but they're in the wrong place here. Like, yeah, oh, no, they need to be in that set. Let's put them all in one room instead and just do one lesson. I know, I think, I think there's a flaw in that argument because I think, I think the whole point of the misallocation becomes strong with setting because the point of sets is there's clear ceilings and. This this is meant to be why mixed ability is good. Yeah, yeah. But in mixed ability, the idea is there is no floor and no ceiling, right. So the misallocation is kind of, it's kind of. Redundant. Why is it misallocated? If they're in the wrong set, what does it mean? What does misallocate so they're in the wrong set? They're misallocated. Why is that bad? Because in that set, inherently they there will be ceilings on the level of work they have. Yeah. Whereas in in the mixed ability, there's complete fluidity. So they only get fluidity of the work. No, it's not inherent. It's not inherent. In good setting teaching. It's not OK. OK, so this is.

42:22 Not what we're saying this is. This is basically saying mixed ability is good because if you do setting bad then this is. OK, cool. So. So ignore that. I agree. I agree. I agree. No, no. So. This is what I'm saying. We should be ignoring that. We can't be saying that because if you do setting bad, the mixed ability is good. That's not a reason mixed ability is good. You're right, you're right. So so in terms of there being a misallocation, it's like, oh, actually they're getting the wrong input now they're getting the wrong input and the wrong task. Hello, mixed ability. There's one input and there's seven different levels. Inherently to me, this is not this misallocation thing is not a reason why mixed ability is good It to me, if we're saying this is a problem with setting, then it's a huge problem for mixed. So the you're in the wrong place here that this input's not for you. Yeah.

43:02 Wow. So should we go to the one where everyone's doing one input and the vast majority are getting the wrong input? Yeah, it's true. It's true. I think I always it's not very strong. The input I think is a really good argument. I was thinking more of, and I know there's a flaw in this, which I'll say I was thinking more along the lines of tasks. Like quite often in sets, there will be a set task because it's already they're already streamlined in terms of the ability range in that in that group. So it'll just be a task that everyone does. Whereas in the idea in mixed ability is that there are a range of tasks and there's a lot more fluidity between children, what they can do within the lesson, which is nonsense. But I also think it's nonsense because the end of the day, that's bad setting. Yeah, exactly. Good setting will still account for the children in your class and constantly be re re evaluating and thinking how can I stretch these children?

43:43 And I, I I would still in my in my setting, I'd still have a couple of different things I'm gonna. Show me, that's exactly what I'm saying. So good setting. Yeah, it's like, it's like saying if you do setting worse mixed ability is good. Yeah, If we do mixed ability worse, it's not. It's not an inherent reason. Yeah, yeah, I don't think. I think it's an odd one. OK, so not great evidence so far. So teacher allocation UK and US evidence both suggests, as experienced teachers tend to be allocated to lower sets despite those pupils arguably needing the most expert teaching. The new EEF guidance specifically calls this out as something that you have to fix. So again, doing setting bad right? It is though, isn't it really? I get it. OK, so, so in this situation, right. OK, so let's say there's it's four form entry, there are four teachers and you've got an order. 1 is the best, 4 is the worst. Just do right.

44:25 OK. Yep. If you do setting and you go OK, the tops are gonna get teacher one and we're gonna go down, down, down, down, right? Yeah, sure. Cool. OK, that's bad, isn't it? That's bad. That's bad. They're getting teacher 4 at the bottom. OK. Yeah, mixed ability. Someone's still getting Teacher 4. Someone still getting the teacher was saying it's worse. Yeah, it's true. And within that class, there still be children at the bottom who need the most support who actually are getting a worst. If it was just teacher four with those children who are low retainers, or it's teacher four with lower attainers and middle attainers and higher attainers, they're getting a worse deal. Yeah, again, to me does not give a reason as to why inherently mixed abilities better. It's just saying there's a problem with with sets. So we should just do mixed ability. The same problem exists.

45:08 If anything it just says oh this is a nice way of fine tuning to make sets even better. And just to be really clear here, I'm kind of pushing it to the to the Max. I actually do think that when you do set, I do think it's good practise to make sure your strong teachers are with children who need the most input and support. Because I think if you think about that teacher #1 being with the low attainers and four with the high attainers that I think would get better outcomes for everyone than if you swapped it around. I think there's everyone. There's more room for movement with those lower retainers than there is for movement with the high retainers. There's more room for building confidence because a lot of the high attainers already have the confidence. There's more room of getting children, less foundational knowledge and keys skills where they should be because the tops already have that. So I think that you can still, I think, have a preference. And I do think strong teachers should not be glossed over for those lower.

45:57 It's kind of a, it's a, it's a really annoying analogy really, because it's like, it's like a lose, lose situation. Because I could easily counter that by saying, well, by definition, you're falling into the trap of it's better for everyone because the gap's smaller at the end, because you've put your strongest teacher with the lowest attainment, so they've made more progress. And if that stronger teacher was with the top attainers instead of the the weakest teacher, the top attainers would have made more progress than they did with the weakest teacher. So the gap smaller looks better. Whereas realistically at the end of the day though those top attainers we chose, they were the worst option for them. So I think or everything we said there is absolutely true of a certain level, there's a certain low attainment where I'm like, yeah, what we just said is true, everyone be brought up, right. I think there is a level lower where that is vital and comes first.

46:40 Sure. So if children can't add, if children can't recognise number, if children are that far behind that they literally they can't sabotize, right. And they're in year 3-4 and five, they need the strongest teachers to get into a certain level. Yeah. So I just think there's a little cap there where I'm like, OK, what? You've just heard me explain it exactly what I think when in general. Yeah, Yeah. But if the lowest of the lowest of the low, they need that targeted really quality good support to get to that level where I'm saying that's cool, by the way, that isn't the expected level. No, no, there's loads of children working in the working towards it's. On their journey. It's on it's on the maximising their journey. Like they need that really, really specific input. But I agree completely. I agree completely. I just, I think it's I think it's a good thing to because when you're constantly only giving your best teachers to your best children, you are making that choice to exacerbate it right?

47:29 Always. And it's like what I'm saying is there should be no preference. It should just be who gets what. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't just always be the lowest, always get what we define as the worst teacher. It shouldn't be like that. No, no, it shouldn't really matter. What you should do is look at your teachers and look at your kids and see what they. Need exactly it should it should be bespoke every single year. Yeah, genuinely, all of this stuff should be bespoke. We we, we did that were sets, didn't we? We always said when we we did, we did setting. You know, we had a free form Junior School. We did setting some years we didn't. Yeah, because we looked at the data, we looked at the children, we listened to the teachers from last year and we would sometimes say, let's do mixed, that would happen. We had a hybrid. Most of the time we came to the conclusion that setting was the right thing to do. But setting in year 4 and Year 5 and year 6 looked different, looked completely different because it was based on what the. Child, we always looked at the cohort that's absolutely right. And it was always, basically, it was honestly, it was basically always a hybrid because even even setting, we didn't do it in the traditional format of literally chunk the children. Not always the.

48:23 Children 1 to 96 and do the direct chance quite often, at least in my experience, we, we literally just looked at the cohort and then eased in their attainment and just thought, what do they, what do these kids need? Do we need to take the top 32 children and the next 30 children or can they just all be mixed? Sometimes they're like, they can just be mixed. That's, that's absolutely fine. OK, but do we need to take the, the, the lowest 60 entertainers? Do you know what actually, they've got significant gaps here from this point onwards and they can see they've got a lot of similarities. I think they'd benefit from being in one, in one place together with this particular teacher who's, and we'd look at that every single time and, and that's how it should be done. But anyway, back to this, this is so I feel like we're just kind of dismantling the, the arguments for mixed ability. But here's another one though, that I, that I, I always, I feel like I could dismantle this a bit, but I feel like this is what always got thrown at me constantly my whole career.

49:10 I got told this was true and I was a bad teacher, but I didn't agree with it, right? It's the whole effects of peers, right? So Vygotsky zone of proximal development, all, all this research you learn when you're, when you're, when you're training to be a teacher, right? A lot of qualitative work suggests that lower attainers can and will benefit from being around and surrounded by the higher attainers. OK. And by being near, near those more capable peers, they will learn from them, also resolve from them and, and people. And, and that's, that's true, right? But what people say to me is there's no loss in this. This is a benefit to everybody because the higher attainers will learn more by teaching and helping those children that are lower attainers than them, and the lower attainers will benefit from it. As if that's like the perfect diss all solved. And I have always, always struggled with that. And.

49:57 Yeah. And I know you have as well and you're probably just come in. No, no, no, go on. I'll jump in because I feel like we've basically addressed this already in this episode. We've we have agreed, I don't know if you agree as well listening, but we have agreed that if, if I set with the higher attainers, I can push them on more than I than I could have done if they're enigibility set and the research we started with kind of backed that up as well. So what are we saying then, which one's true? Because if we're also saying none of the higher achievers will will achieve more in a mixed ability set because they can help the lower attainers. This comes to a point, right where I just thought in my career I was like, oh, no, that's not true. We just say that, yeah, it's that's not that's not true. It's copium. Yeah, yeah, exactly that. It's copium. Copium with the highest order, yeah. We just say that justify it. Yeah, we just have to. We have to.

50:38 We just don't want to accept the fact that in a mixed ability set in a lot of in a lot of circumstances, those higher achievers actually won't make as much progress. And actually, do you know what the most beneficial thing for them is actually not helping a child who's who has lower attainment than them. That's actually not the best thing for them to do. The best thing to do is be pushed even more completely and not have anything to do that other child. Yeah, there is to say. That no, there is, there is definitely something to be said, which is what this rooted in again, where the ability to explain what you're thinking or understand. So let's say a child is really proficient with long multiplication, right? But the act of getting that child to really explain in detail what they're doing at each step and why is a good way of forcing a child to really think about it, to express themselves. It's good oracy, it's good to check for understanding and it's actually good. If you're able to explain something at a lower and lower level, then that shows it.

51:27 I think it's it's widely accepted that shows a mastery of the. Subject. Yeah, like conceptual competence. Yeah, like based on who's in front of you, you can change how you articulate something so they understand it, right. We've seen these videos online of astrophysicists explained like a black hole to five different things. And it's it's a four year old, a 10 year old, a 16 year old graduate and a doctor. True mastery. Yeah. And, and the conversations are fantastic because they're getting across the same point but at different levels. There's something to be said for children who are really good at maths, being able to do that and support and help, right. Not every single day of every single lesson. That becomes copium. That becomes when I say copium for anyone, it's not, it's not an element. I'm just saying it's cope. It's the way we cope with the fact that which we, we, we really deep down, yeah, we deep down we know it's not the best for them, but we try and find a way of coping with that.

52:12 And that's by us saying, oh, it's good for them, isn't it? No at. Least they're developing this little subset of skills that we know is important. But like you said, doing it all the time, every single day, every single day, probably not the most beneficial thing for them to be doing on an individual level. And it's always that battle to me of like, how much do we care about the meta? And we're looking at, you know, children in general. Is it, is it just about bringing the lower attainers up at any cost? Because if that's the case, that's a good argument. If if we look at individuals and say what is best for this individual at this moment, regardless of any other factor, I think there are situations in mixed ability where you can't say that's the best outcome for that exact child in the. Season. Of course not. Of course not. And you know what, if you do set and have a lower attainment class like I used to have, they can still talk to each other. By the way, there are still children who get things and children who course there's a range. I help them.

53:00 Yeah, because it tends to be in not always, but you can become become aware of trends and ideas of things which your children might not get and you can help them you can group them together. It's just more. Effective. Yeah, because it's because your your understanding of the group that you have as a teacher is immediately reducing scope in a lot of circumstances. Not always. This is the beauty of being an adaptive teacher. There'll be sometimes where you think, crikey, they absolutely could have coped in that other set today, cool, you're a good teacher because you recognise that you adapted to it. But a lot of the time you can notice those trends and you can really focus and nail down on the thing that this group are typically like to likely to find hard. Absolutely. OK. Another one here then for mixed stability is about curriculum compression in lower sets. Again, it's a negative offsetting, not necessarily a positive for for for mixed ability.

53:43 But let's have a look. The research literature is clear that lower sets often get narrower, slower, and less rich curriculum. If your lower set is doing arithmetic drills while the top set is doing reasoning and proof, the gap can never close by design. I fundamentally disagree with that. Why? Because the because if the if children can't do arithmetic, then their reasoning and their problem solving is going to be shot to pieces. There is a reason. It's a foundational basis, a reason one, the thing leads on to another. I'm not saying children should never do reasoning at all. You should always be doing reasoning and problem solving based on things that you're proficient and fluent in. But of course, of course what you deliver is going to look different in lower sets to higher sets. What's the point in doing it otherwise?

54:24 And I think it's just naive to think that. So we use the words here, narrower, slower and less rich. No one wants a less rich curriculum. No, I think that, again, this is a teaching problem, not a setting problem. It's a teaching problem. I've taught lower sets. We've had a really rich curriculum. We've covered the whole curriculum. Still slower. Yeah, that's kind of the point. Yeah, it was slower, obviously. What? Oh, you do lower sets, they'll get a slower curriculum. I'm just adapting to their. Yeah, as I say, it's not slower by design, it's slower by it's it's adaptation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They needed to go more slowly on this because they didn't understand it. Yeah, they needed to spend more time doing the arithmetic because they can't do. It the idea that everyone knows at the same pace is absurd. It's what I mean and it's basically saying, well, some kids will get a slower ones to get them in a mixed ability but where they can't keep up. Is that better to you just because it's not got the word slower in front of it?

55:10 So much of this and the arguments I've always seen to me has really sounded like virtue signalling. So you can't say ability. Oh no, you can't go slower. Oh no, it's less rich. You can't do. These kids can't do maths. I'm helping them do maths. I'm meeting them where they are and being an adaptable teacher. I am going slower and I'm going into more detail where I need to. I'm giving them more chance to practise the things they could not do if they were just lumped together in one homogeneous BLOB where everyone's just mixed, where it just happens to be. They had the birthday between September and August. Why is that more of an adequate way of grouping together children than whether they can actually do the thing or not? That should be the only thing that matters. It shouldn't matter what their backgrounds are like. It shouldn't matter what age.

55:52 None of that should matter. Can they do it? Yes. Cool. Can they not? Cool. We're going to help them. Have they got, you know, are they, are they just children who will struggle to work at that pace? Yes, go slower. Then it's not a bad thing. I guess the counter arguments, what you just said is kind of what you just said in terms of people understandably say that you shouldn't group children on their prior attainment, which is what setting equally is. Is that understandable kind of like because you're saying, you know, can they do it or can't they do it? I don't know. I haven't talked to me yet. Yeah, but we can get a good idea. We can. We can, but like. That's why sets need to be fluid as well. That's an that's a very important counter argument. But I can, but I do. I can empathise when people say we are just assuming. We're constantly assuming.

56:36 By putting a child into a set, we are assuming what they can and can't do across the entire. Master, are we are we though? Because what my point, no, my point is that it's adaptable. It's slow. It's not slow because I've already decided it's slower. It's slow because that that class needed to go slower at that point. And there would be some children who needed to go quicker probably, But in a mixed ability class, there'd be far more children who needed to go quicker. So we're just narrowing that. We're narrowing that base of like there are fewer children not getting what they need. Yeah, right. We're just narrowing it. Are we making assumptions? You know, we make assumptions all of of the time. All of the time we're making assumptions. It's based on pattern spotting, it's based on seeing what children can do and we make that assumption. Then we assess, then we test, then we gap analyse, then we teach and then we move. We move. It has to be adaptable. It has to be adaptable is the word.

57:16 Adaptable covers everything. We make predictions and assumptions and then we adapt. Whether that's moving children from class to class, whether that's my speed, whether that's what I cover, Whatever it is, it's quality first. Teaching can make it work and make it better. But if we just say setting's bad because sometimes teachers are bad. Yeah. That that OK, Does that mean setting's bad? No. Does that mean university's bad because sometimes when people finish university as bad teachers? No. It's just a matter of. Fact. I reckon people's arguments have generally can be summarised over over the years of if you've got the bad teacher, it's better for them to be in a mixed ability set than a than a than a than a than a set set. Why? I think that's what people think because because at least in the mix of set, then if you're if you're doing setting badly because you've narrowed the curriculum, you've made really bad assumptions about the children.

58:00 You've narrowed it so much. They're not, you're not even giving them a chance to excel in areas like maybe could have excelled in, right. But in the mixed ability set by design, you're forced to open that, open that gap anyway. There's fluidity built in with within the class from them. And those children that would have been put in this horrible ceiling before by design are now by design, accidentally. The teachers know it because they're not a good teacher accidentally. If there's a bit more fluidity and they can, they can access some stuff that they that they can actually do that maybe you wouldn't have thought they could do if you were based on presumptions. I think that's like the core essence of this. Potentially that is that is still though different that that person you're saying is not a great teacher is still doing different teaching styles because in the mixed ability they're planning for different abilities. Yeah, I still think within a set you should be planning for different abilities as well. Yeah, it's still, it's still a shortcoming of of, of of looking a set to something different.

58:44 It's still a shortcoming. There, but I can see why if you know, if you're catering to the lowest common denominator of teaching ability, I can see why people land on the idea of if we're playing it safe. I I got mixed ability on sets. I really, yeah. I mean, I really disagree because I I, I fundamentally think that if you make, if you're going to make mixed ability work, you need the best teachers. I think it's the yeah, yeah, No, I think, I think it's. The funny enough, I also think that, but I do think that's what people think. Yeah, potentially and and let's let's let's let's get on then I make because of this episode's really getting on and that when mom and me and we planned out loads more. But I think we just need to wrap it up with this next section because I really want to talk about reality. That's kind of what this was. That's what I was leading into of that last bit. The reality, we can sit here and talk about pedagogical approaches and ideologies all day long. And at the end of the day, the, the hilarious pointless conclusion is if you're a really good teacher, it doesn't matter. That's the conclusion really.

59:30 Oh, if you're a really good teacher, none of these, none of these things even come into effect anyway. It's like, OK, well, the research says that not everyone's a good teacher, though. That's why they found these things exist in the 1st place, because a chunk of teachers are doing setting badly or are doing mixed ability. Right, right, right, right. So the, the reality I want, I want to get into now is the manageability of these two systems. And this was a huge factor for, for me personally as to why I would always err on the side of let's see if we can make setting work because the workload is greatly reduced, greatly reduced. Like you just said, that teacher, if we're going to the lowest common denominator and we say, OK, we'll just put them in a mixed ability because at least the children then have got accidentally, they've got chances for a bit of mobility in the tasks they do.

1:00:11 Well, not necessarily. Not necessarily, because it is incredibly, incredibly hard to accurately and adequately resource. Yeah, a lesson that's pitched at the entirety of the range of ability within your year. Group. Well, what we're saying then, because that would suggest to me that mixed ability is more workload. That's exactly that's exactly what. I'm saying so, so, but I, I always, I always thought mixed ability is less workload because you can share planning. So it depends on your setting. That's interesting. I don't think there's, I don't think there's, I don't, I don't think there's, I don't think that one jumps out than the other. So I'm really interested what you think. I I don't see one as more or less workload in terms of planning because I think for example, we have four form entry. We did mixed ability classes in year 3. We shared planning the whole time. I did less math planning than ever before because we were sharing that across the board.

1:00:53 Yeah, okay. Within the lesson, maybe it went more deeply. Maybe I had a different more routes for children to go to and if they finished early they could get on to something. But in general, I was planning way less. And then when I did my sets in year 4, I, I was planning every week because that was my specific set. And then children need something. So I had more workload when I went to sets and less workload when I was in, when I was in mixed. And, but I, I don't think it automatically is one or the other. No, you're absolutely right. And actually, it's a. It's a good point to. To consider because obviously in a in a single form school that's completely flipped again, it's not it's not even flipped, is it? It's the same workload no matter. Well, it's. Not because now you're you're planning, if you're planning for a set I, I, I. I think if you don't, you're think you're going right If you were the only person planning I. Think I think it's it's harder. To planning, I think it's really it's harder to plan from it's but there are obviously situations that you's right yeah, so but there are obviously situations like you just said where if you've got share planning and obviously.

1:01:35 Makes no You're right though, because, because I'm not being funny. The the wider your breadth of children, the more you feel like you need to cater them, the more you feel like you need to. Plan, of course, it's just. That so if you're not sharing, it's. Right. That's the natural way of things. But you're right though, there's obviously a scale there depending on the context of your school. But the other one that I think is less of a scale and maybe you can come back with this one is the manageability in general. I don't think it makes a difference between whether you are single form or form entry planning, sharing planning or not. But how easy it is to manage and how effectively you can manage a class. I think is where the scale is right in terms of teaching ability is how effectively can you manage a mixed ability class in that hour that you're teaching maths. I think that's where the scope massively changes. There are two answers to this managing in terms of what you're preparing pedagogically in your lesson. Managing in terms of behaviour, right. In terms of behaviour.

1:02:26 A lot of people pushed back and said mixed ability is better for behaviour. And the reason is because again, if you just think about children who are more reluctant mathematicians, if they're all in one room, they're all bouncing off each other. They don't want to do what they're doing. It can be harder to harder to cultivate that that need. That's what a lot of people said on the real. I've just found I've not found that myself personally, but I'm not saying that doesn't happen. No, absolutely I can understand it completely. Whereas when you're talking about managing it in terms of just simply being able to produce the less and, and like literally in the lesson, getting through adding two numbers together with exchanging with that breadth of, of ability in your class or attainment, sorry, is obviously harder than if it's set. And when they're set, there's, there's still a breadth of ability there, but it's smaller.

1:03:07 And the the simple way I can just say to someone that that's obviously true is that if you then went for your mixed ability year five class, if I said to you, now you've got a mixed with year 4, you gotta have a year 4-5 mixed class, which happens up and down the country. Is that is that going to be easier, the same or harder to manage the massively increased pull of ability in your classroom? It's obviously harder. Of course, let's go one step further. The whole of key stage 2IN1 classroom doing something, is that easier, the same or harder? Very clearly harder. Why do we pretend that going one step more granular within a year group is suddenly the end of the world and makes no difference? It's stupid, it's bad, it's all for it's violence. Is it violence to have year 4 and five different? Yeah.

1:03:47 No, it's complete nonsense. Of course, of course it's harder to manage a mixed ability with a much wider range of children in the. Class I've taught, I had one year of my career where I taught in A1 form school when I was in year 6 and it was a mixed ability class obviously, because it's one form. And I can tell you right now that the challenges I faced and the imposter syndromes I got sometimes where I've where it because I found it so unbelievably difficult to cater adequately as I wanted to cater for all of the needs in that child for every single mouse doesn't at all times. And and it just got to the point I was like, Oh, I can't. You get to the point where you realise, oh, of course I can't. That's why sex exist.

1:04:28 Because if I did, if I had half of these children and it was the lowest attainers, I would obviously tailor my input differently to how I'm doing it right now and it would be better for them. Yeah, so I've got, so it's to push back there because my, my gut instinct again, I'm going to just stick to this because we've definitely veered more towards, we're going to be very neutral in the middle. Well, you obviously prefer sets. We're geared towards sets. You basically said you can't do it. I'm going to push back and say you obviously can. There are lots of schools out there, lots of people listening right now who are teachers who are advocate for mixed ability, who maybe even are advocates, but have done it themselves for years and they see that obviously it can work. So I just want to just make this really clear to people and just get your input. Obviously can, right? Yeah. But I felt like I couldn't in that moment because that, because it was so hard to manage is what I'm trying to say. I felt like I couldn't manage, which was the overall point here.

1:05:10 I felt like I couldn't manage keeping on top of everything in that classroom. It took a lot more energy and a lot more time and it did ultimately impact my workload and stress. And I think that's the reality that I want to talk about. I'm not saying you can't make mixed ability work. There are probably a lot of better teachers out there than me who in that situation would have been, come on you novice out of the way. I know exactly how to manage the situation and done a phenomenal job. But for me as a pretty good maths teacher, I looked at that situation and thought if I could just split this class in half, I would get more out of every single child here. And I just would. And that is the reality for me. And honestly a huge percentage of teachers. And I can't get over that fact. And it is the one thing to me whenever this argument comes down, I'm always like, I always on the side of streaming because I'm like, do you know what? Not everyone is the top 1% of teachers. They're just not like by definition as I work. So there are, there are going to be hundreds of thousands of teachers who I will struggle equally like I do and actually not do a very good job.

1:06:05 No one wants to say that but not do a very good job for any of the children in the class because it was too hard to. Manage and that's why earlier I disagreed when I said that going mixed ability means that your weaker teachers are fine. No, I think they flounder. It's harder. Yeah, it's much harder, I think. I think, I think if it's if it's set, if it's a set situation, it just it just helps them because it just shrinks it. That's that's what I think. And I think that's. True. And no one likes to hear that. People don't like to hear that because it's accepting. It's accepting realities that not every teacher is is an incredible mathematician, or incredible. I'm sorry, you know, I'm, I'm sorry. Practitioner. Have you met? I trained with someone who was teaching a year two class who was about to do a lesson on time and said to me before they struggle with quarter past. No, no, no, I'm sorry because this is true.

1:06:48 This is real. Yeah, it's awful. And let's be honest, we have both taught in lots of schools and met lots of teachers who say, oh, I could never do year six. Yeah, I could never. I could never teach your six. It's too tricky. I'm not going to say anything more about that. I'll let you think what you think about that. But it does show there's obviously a massive breadth of teachers abilities across all of the subjects and in general, their pedagogy, their practitioner ability. It's a very complex job, so to go with the ideology that works when everyone is the best practitioner in the world, to me is a really, really annoying argument that has pissed me off over the last 10 years. Because I'm like, yeah, but can we stop ignoring the fact that we're not, though? Can we stop ignoring the fact that most teachers actually aren't this good? It's right.

1:07:30 We've got a red sheet. We've got a red sheet, red on the green. It's fine. That's a differentiation. It's all good. It's all good. It's fine. We've got differentiation. We've got three different tasks. You can do the same input. Everyone's going to, you know. Hey, then I've always said it. A rising tide raises all boats. Say that again. I thought it might be. You're so right. The, the line between reality, it is it, it seems distorted. And, and, and just to, just to make this point, this rounding off point here, OK, it's, it's as straightforward as this. People who've spent 10 years telling me that setting is inherently bad and awful and terrible for the kids. I just hope that what this does is make them realise that they're being over the top. They're on a bit of a high horse. It's completely acceptable to set because children can get really good outcomes from it and there are loads of other things that you should be looking at first.

1:08:17 If you're worried about your school's outcomes in maths, whether you do mixed ability or setting should probably be about 5th on the list of what you want to actually impact the quality of teaching. I I just can't go over the quality of teaching the actual the actual what is going on in your lesson, how adaptive you are, whether you're meeting the needs of the children is so much more important than performative. If you do mixed ability and it's red, red amber green and oh look I've got a table over there for Deans and the children can just go and get the Deans if they want to get them performative nonsense. Children even need support or they don't yeah, don't just leave it up to them to Oh yeah, well I've got the isn't this you walk into my classroom. It's fantastic. There's children have all abilities here. Isn't this so inclusive and amazing? And and I've got all of the manipulatives out and the children. There's there's three different tasks and that that people working with a teaching assistant and I'm working with this group and they're on a red ambushy and they're a green sheet performative nonsense.

1:09:03 It can look good. This is what I'm saying. It can be really good. It's when it's performative. I'm talking about when it's performative. So don't turn around and say to me what I do isn't performative good. Thank fantastic. You're probably doing mixed ability really well, but it can so easily slip into just being performative to look like we're being inclusive, to look like we're helping everyone at once. And isn't this so much better than setting? The answer is, it's not always no. I agree. I agree. And yeah, not there isn't one, but I was trying to think that if I had the perfect school for the perfect situation, I have the best, I've got the best ten teachers in the whole country and they can share planning and workloads already managed. I probably would go down the route of let's let's let's go down mixed stability because I think there are clear benefits to it. We've talked, we've dismantled a lot of them, but there are still clear benefits to mixed stability. I swear I wouldn't.

1:09:48 Would you not? No, all I would say is let's look at the children. True. Yeah, just go to the children. I think I'd go to that and my baseline. I I think the best practise is to not have a baseline. Yeah, Yeah. It's like I need fantastic teachers and you know, this cool, let's see what the kids need. Oh, I think it seems, and this is what I've done my whole career, 80% of the time. It turned out that I thought the best thing for children would be would be setting. I don't think that would change. I don't think that would change to the best teacher in the world. I think I would still look at the children. I'd still go amazing, we've got the best teacher in the world, Fantastic on the whole for this cohort. Actually, let's set them and it might be set slightly different to last year, set different next year, mixed ability one year. In general though, I think we can really do setting well in a way that doesn't affect confidence, that improves outcomes for everyone. Does it increase a gap?

1:10:34 Maybe, but that gap is making everyone better. Definitely. Let me change what I said then because you're absolutely right. It is. It is just about the context of the cohort. What I really truly meant there was if I had the best school in the world, the best teachers ever, I would be significantly more likely to be considering mixed stability then I would be streaming. And even though still it's down to the children, everything we just said about the reality and the workload and the manageability to me does actually play a part in my mind as to whether I even want to explore this concept or not. Because I, there is, there are realities where I think where I imagine I could be in a school where I think mixed ability could work, You know, in this situation, if I had the best, most amazing practises in the world, the top ten teachers. But in this situation right now, I actually think, given all circumstances and reality of the, the ability of the teachers and the system and the, the situation I've got, I think streaming is going to be the better outcome though, even though ideologically maybe mixed ability could be better. Reality, sometimes Trump's the ideologies, is what I'm trying to.

1:11:32 Say almost always. Yeah, that's real because one's actually real. Yeah. Be really interesting. I think in the future, what would be great is to get some people maybe to chat to Joe Dennis, long time, who maybe, you know, really, really strongly for mixed. Yeah. Yeah, and that's why we're wrong. And have an argument. Yeah, don't genuinely like. I mean, like, I mean, a debate, That's the word, yeah. The debate the the polite version of an argument. Yeah, based on your, the real you did the other day, I can already tell that there's raffle favours and there will be people who vehemently disagree, like absolutely. And there'll be something we've missed. There will be there. They'll just be a perspective we only, you know, we explored like a good 10 perspectives there, but there will be more that we didn't maybe take into account and someone will tell us why we're absolutely, completely wrong and it'll be interesting. My favourite thing was when someone commented on Facebook and said that I'd completely misinterpreted it and I should go and sit on the low ability class low ability table for teachers.

1:12:23 I mean, that was me. Yeah, I was like, OK, it sounds like you're the. We found a high horse. Everyone. We found a high horse. Here they are. This is like I did a video saying both were OK. Yeah, and you and you're an idiot user. Oh, thank you. I'm sure you help your child's confidence all the time in your mixed ability classes. Anyway, let's finish up there. Please, guys, share this with someone you think might find useful. Send it to someone who absolutely loves mixed ability because they might think oh they might get annoyed. Who knows, maybe don't, because they might not rate US five stars, but you will. Please do it right now guys, see you next time. Long old episode, bye.