Tom Campbell Maths Blog

Mixed Ability Groups: The Case for a More Egalitarian Maths Classroom The other day one of my year 10 kids asked what set they were in and I told them set four to which they said “oh god! Is that the bottom set?". I said it was but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do well. I explained that I didn’t believe in setting and that as a department we were no longer setting at KS3 to which they said how lucky they thought those kids were. They asked if they could move up and I said they could but that they were lucky to be in such a small class (eight students) and that it would be a bigger group in set three. One of the girls remarked how awful the set three she had been in the previous year had been, how it had been loud and how she hated it. I explained that lots of the time students who have trouble with behaviour end up being put in lower sets. They said at least if you move up it gives your confidence a boost but then immediately the same girl said but it ruins it when you move dow...

  Can student agency improve students' attitude towards learning? Students often find school a controlling and constraining experience.  St udents have no choice over what they learn at school and for many students much of what they are taught seems completely irrelevant to their lives and their futures.  As a maths teacher, I’m very familiar with questions like "why are we doing this?" or "what is the point of this?" etc. I always struggle with these questions because the answer is often that the actual content will be useless to 99% of students beyond their GCSE. It’s difficult to convince a student that knowing how to use a compass will be beneficial in adulthood or that algebraic reasoning is a useful life skill. It’s not just what children learn that is controlled though. In recent years, the UK has seen a shift towards traditional authoritarian schooling. Students are told when they must work, when they eat, when they can take breaks, what they have to do ...