Zoe Brennan: Why state schools should stream their pupils

The head of sixth form refused to give me a reference for Oxford, because “no one from here gets in there”. My sister wanted to be a doctor, but my parents were told that this was also a hopeless delusion, as she was “not good enough” at science. She is now a senior consultant in emergency medicine, running a busy A&E department.

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Dr Lee Elliot Major is chief executive of the Sutton Trust, which aims to improve social mobility through education. With setting, children are taught by ability in individual subjects, such as maths, whereas with streaming the whole year group is divided into bands.

Both systems can work well, he believes, but tend to benefit the children in the highest sets. Poorer children are disproportionately represented in the lower sets. “It can be a blunt instrument, particularly when used as a ‘fixed’ concept, with children consigned to one set their entire time at school. It comes back to the quality of teaching – good teachers would be continually assessing children,” he says. Parents should ask questions when looking at schools, such as whether, and how often, sets are reviewed.

The Sutton Trust* has commissioned Prof Becky Francis, from King’s College London, to research the issue, which remains politically charged.

Read her full article here. *The Becky Francis research was commissioned by our sister charity, the Education Endowment Foundation.