For about twenty-five years, the dominant message in teacher training has been clear. The research says mixed attainment is better. Setting damages confidence, harms low attainers, and widens the gap. Then in April 2026, the EEF published a study that complicates all of that.
Nine thousand pupils, 97 schools, two years of data. The finding: pupils in mixed attainment classes made roughly one month less progress in maths than pupils in sets. High prior attainers made two months less progress. And the team that produced this result is the same team that gave us most of the evidence against setting in the first place.
Dylan and Hayden get into what the study actually found and what it did not find, what they were both taught during training and whether they still believe it, and the honest classroom experience that the academic literature tends not to capture.
They also make the strongest possible case for both sides before landing somewhere honest. The mixed attainment argument does not collapse because of one study. The setting argument is not vindicated either. But the conversation has shifted and anyone working in secondary maths right now deserves to know how and why.
Sharp, properly researched, and the kind of debate that should be happening in every staffroom in the country.
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