FACT: Selecting students by ability is NOT the way to raise standards!

“For centuries educators have wondered how they should design school systems so that they best serve all students’ needs. Some countries have adopted non-selective and comprehensive school systems that seek to provide all students with similar opportunities, leaving it to each teacher and school to cater to the full range of student abilities, interests and backgrounds. Other countries respond to diversity by grouping or tracking students, whether between schools or between classes within schools, with the aim of serving students according to their academic potential and/ or interests in specific programmes. Conventional wisdom says that the former serves equity, while the latter fosters quality and excellence. The assumption underlying selection policies is that students’ talents will develop best when students reinforce each other’s interest in learning. There is considerable variation in how countries track and stream students. Evidence from PISA shows that none of the countries with a high degree of separation by ability, whether in the form of tracking, streaming, or grade repetition, is among the top-performing education systems or among the systems with the largest share of top performers. The highest-performing systems are those that offer equitable opportunities to learn to all of their students. This is consistent with other research that shows that narrowing the range of student abilities in classes or schools through tracking does not result in better learning outcomes. The pattern is different for within-class ability grouping or subject-specific ability grouping, which has shown to be effective when appropriate adjustments are made to the curriculum and instruction.”

ANDREAS SCHLEICHER ‘WORLD CLASS How to build a 21st-century school system’