Attainment grouping in English secondary schools: A national survey of current practices

ABSTRACT

Attainment grouping is a prevalent yet controversial practice, used in most English schools and on the rise internationally, despite evidence that it is detrimental to the majority of pupils. In England, no data is routinely recorded regarding these practices, and most research on student outcomes depends on a simplistic dichotomy between pupils grouped and ungrouped by attainment. We present the findings of a survey of attainment grouping practices in English secondary schools, providing an updated picture of the profile of attainment grouping in English and mathematics for students aged 11–16. Grouping in sets is dominant for mathematics and, while variants on mixed attainment grouping are frequently used for students aged 11–14 in English, the frequency of setting increases as students progress through secondary school. Schools with disadvantaged intakes are more likely to group by attainment. We also find that grouping practices are much more complex and dynamic in enactment than is implied by much of the literature and that teachers report that many schools adapt grouping strategies to meet the perceived needs of different cohorts. We provide an updated conceptualisation of grouping practices as a continuum and discuss its implications for current and future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Attainment grouping
• ability grouping
• secondary schools
• setting
• streaming

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Professor Matthew Inglis and Professor Andy Noyes for their comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In England, secondary school, the focus of this paper, is compulsory from age 11 to 16. Year 7 (age 11-12) is broadly equivalent Grade 6 internationally and so on. At age 16, the end of Year 11, almost all students take the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in English and mathematics as well as a range of other subjects.

2. OECD refer to grouping by ‘ability’ rather than attainment.

3. .onlinesurveys.ac.uk

4. select-statistics.co.uk/calculators/sample-size-calculator-population-proportion/

5. As in many online surveys using monetary incentives, a substantial proportion of the answers were not valid. However, as the survey required specific information about the school name and postcode, those cases were identified and dropped from the analysis. We assumed a conservative approach, and did not include any observation that failed to provide accurate information for identification of the school.

6. The invitation for taking part in the study was delivered using the Campus Marketing Database (3,105) while the National-Level descriptive statistics were estimated using official administrative records (3,136). Differences in the number of observations between both databases are minor and unlikely to substantially affect the results.

7. For further information on the NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey see: .nfer.ac.uk/key-topics-expertise/products/teacher-voice-omnibus-survey/

8. The use of weights imposes additional challenges to the sample. As there is some loss of information associated with certain variables used for post-stratification (e.g. ‘OFSTED Rating’) the number of observations in the original data drops when the weighting procedure is implemented. Therefore, we have opted to begin by presenting the results of the achieved sample without using weights and reserve this procedure for the analysis of the characteristics of the schools implementing the different grouping strategies (Figure 2-4 in the main text and all the analysis in the supplementary material).

9. Results from the NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus survey confirm our findings, showing, for example, increases in the use of ‘Sets’ as students progress in the school (34% in year 7; 40% in year 8; and 46% in year 9). Full results from the NFER survey are provided as supplemental material.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Education Endowment Foundation. Gabriel Gutiérrez is supported by Associative Research Programme, grant number ANID PIA CIE160007; Education Endowment Foundation [-]; Associative Research Programme [ANID PIA CIE160007].

Notes on contributors

Becky Taylor

Becky Taylor is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research at UCL Institute of Education, where she leads on the Teaching strand of the Centre’s work. She is interested in the relationship between research, policy and practice in schools, with a social justice perspective.

Jeremy Hodgen

Jeremy Hodgen is a Professor of Mathematics Education at the UCL Institute of Education. He is interested in investigating ways of improving teaching and learning for all learners and conducting research relevant to schools, teachers and policy-makers. He is currently Chair of the British Society for the Learning of Mathematics.

Antonina Tereshchenko

Antonina Tereshchenko is Research Fellow in the Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research at UCL Institute of Education. She has been involved in four different research projects around attainment grouping in England

Gabriel Gutiérrez

Gabriel Gutiérrez holds a PhD in Education at UCL Institute of Education. He is an ESRC-Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Department of Social Policy) and an Associate Researcher at the Centre for Educational Justice (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile).