Opinion: School ability grouping is potentially harmful

In light of recent research findings, involving 9,000 pupils, that suggest attainment groupings may have an effect on pupils' self-confidence, Dr Becky Taylor (UCL Institute of Education) explains how schools may want to reflect on existing teaching practices. England's schools make more use of within-school "ability" grouping than those in other similar countries, yet there is no evidence that this practice results in better outcomes overall for students. In fact, the Education Endowment Foundation toolkit reviews the best evidence available from experimental studies and concludes that there is a small negative impact of attainment grouping for middleand low-attainers, and a small positive impact for high attainers. Effectively, setting and streaming are not effective ways to raise attainment for the majority of pupils. The practice seems even more questionable because we also know that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to have low prior attainment. It's not just pupils from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who may be losing out. In our recent study involving more than 9,000 pupils, we found that black pupils were 2.4 times more likely than white pupils to be placed in a lower maths sets at the start of secondary school in a manner unwarranted by their key stage 2 maths results.