IOE hosts conference on mixed attainment maths

The attendees shared their experiences of planning, teaching and developing resources for mixed attainment classes. 

The conference aimed to help form a community of teachers who share a common belief in social justice and the value of not separating children into groups according to notions of their ‘ability'.

Among the speakers included the IOE’s Professor Jeremy Hodgen who spoke on the findings of the Best Practice in Grouping Students project, which ran from 2014 – 2018.

The project found that setting pupils by attainment is unlikely to boost attainment, but specific activity grouping might. It also raised concerns about allocating pupils to classes based on their attainment, particularly regarding bias and misallocation.

The researchers discovered that once differences in socioeconomic background were controlled for, girls were 1.55 times more likely to be misallocated to a lower maths set than boys.

Black pupils were 2.54 times more likely to be misallocated to a lower set in maths, compared with white pupils. These formed findings that showed that top-set students were more likely to be white and middle class, while bottom-set students were more likely to be working class and black.

Professor Hodgen also shared news of the Student Grouping Study, a new project investigating attainment grouping and mixed attainment grouping in secondary schools. The project is being run by Professor Jeremy Hodgen and Dr Becky Taylor.

Other workshops at the conference covered topics on ensuring all pupils are challenged and supported in mixed attainment classes, making pedagogies more visible, and Inquiry maths. 

Media contact

Rowan Walker, UCL Media Relations
T: +44 (0) 20 3108 8515 / +44 (0) 7769 141006 
E: rowan.walker@ucl.ac.uk 

Links

• Mixed Attainment Maths Conference
• Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment
• View Professor Jeremy Hodgen’s research profile 
• Best Practice in Grouping Students