Streaming

• Streaming


  1. Separating children into different ability groups or classes

  2. Teaching each ability group separately from the others for all subjects
• Teachers see low-ability children


  As lacking ability and have low expectations for them
• Children in lowest streams


  Difficult to move up to highest stream
• Low expectations of children in lowest streams

  Creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of underachievement
• Children placed in lowest streams at age 8


  Suffered decline in IQ scores by age 11
• Middle-class pupils


  Benefit from streaming, placed in highest streams, develop positive self-concept and work hard
• Streaming A to C economy


  Teachers use stereotypical notions of ability to stream students, less likely to see working class and black students as having ability to succeed, these students more likely placed in lowest streams and entered for lower tier GCSEs
• Publishing of exam league tables


  Leads to an 'A to C economy' in schools, where schools focus time and resources on students they see as having potential to get 5 A*-C grades to boost league table position
• Educational triage


  Schools categorise students into 3 types: 1) Those who will pass anyway, 2) Those with potential who will be helped to get a grade C or better, 3) Hopeless cases doomed to fail
• Stereotypical view of working class and black pupils lacking ability


  Used to segregate them into lowest streams or sets
• Wider education system policies


  Directly affect the micro-level process of streaming and producing class differences in achievement, e.g. publication of league tables