What Schools Can’t Do — But Home Education Can
A Teacher's Perspective
In my time as a teacher, I have seen many 11-year-olds who are far more mathematically competent than their 16-year-old counterparts. Yet schools almost always group students primarily based on age, and sometimes only by age, without accounting for the student’s current academic knowledge. Why do schools continue this practice? And is there a better way available to home educators?
The danger of age-only grouping is that teaching does not address the individual student. In practice, some children are left behind academically because they are not yet ready for the content presented to them. Despite this, they are made to learn it anyway and, through no fault of their own, achieve little success — how discouraging! Other students find themselves frustrated by a lack of challenge, needlessly repeating content they had already mastered years earlier—what a waste of time and potential! As a former classroom teacher, I can testify to having seen both situations first-hand on many, many occasions.
Why do schools group children based on age?
There are several answers to this question. One reason—and I think this is probably the main one—is that grouping children by age is an easy logistical solution for schools and has historically been the method used for setting classes.
It is also true that our curriculum frameworks, particularly here in the UK, are structured in age-based stages: Key Stage 1, 2, and so on. Children are expected to sit their Mathematics GCSE at 15 or 16, even if they might have been capable of achieving a top grade at 13 or 14. Furthermore, children of a similar age are generally at a similar stage of cognitive development, so it makes sense to teach them in age groups. Yet age-based grouping has its limitations—limitations that I imagine most reasonable educators would readily acknowledge.
Most educators would concede that splitting children into generic age groups fails to account for the fact that not all children are at the same academic stage within a given cohort. One approach schools take to address this is to subdivide children into classes of similar attainment within the same age group. This is intended to solve the problem of differing academic stages, as students are placed with peers of comparable aptitude. This argument seems convincing, and I largely agree that attainment grouping is a good idea in mathematics—it is certainly an improvement on grouping by age alone. However, in my view, attainment grouping still falls short of a fully satisfying solution and has some serious limitations.
Attainment grouping: how does it work?
To help answer this question, let us first define how mathematics classes are grouped in UK schools. If a school has enough sense to split students into attainment groups for mathematics (and not all do!), then each year group may be divided into, say, four sets—Set 1 containing the highest-attaining students and Set 4 containing the lowest-attaining students.
As a quick aside, I worked in a school that split children into attainment groups but refused to call them “sets.” Instead, the classes were named after famous mathematicians so that students wouldn’t get upset about being placed in Set 4. I believe the idea had good intentions, but contrary to popular belief, changing what something is called doesn’t change what it is. These groups were still attainment groups, even if the names tried to hide that fact. Anyway, children are clever, and they quickly figured out which set they were in!
Set 1 students are high attaining. Are they high attaining because they have a stronger grasp of prior knowledge from younger years? Yes, in part. Are they high attaining because they come from more supportive and stable family backgrounds? In my experience, often yes. Or do they simply have higher baseline intelligence? The answer is probably a mixture of all these factors—and others not listed. Exactly why they are high attaining is beyond the scope of this discussion, but for whatever reasons, they score higher in mathematics assessments.
At the opposite end, we have children in Set 4 who score very low on their mathematics assessments and, sadly, are often very discouraged in their mathematics learning. Again, we could speculate on the reasons why they are low attaining: do they lack prior knowledge of times tables and number bonds, do they have dyscalculia or slow processing, do they come from families that are not very supportive with work at home, do they lack work ethic, or do they simply have lower baseline intelligence? For whatever reasons, they score lower on mathematics assessments.
The Limitations of the School Classroom
Now, the problem with attainment grouping in schools is that the content Set 1 is required to study and the content Set 4 is required to study is largely the same. In some cases, Set 4 might receive slightly modified content, but even then, it is often just an easier version of what Set 1 is learning. While all classes are expected to cover the same topics in the same order, the pace and depth of learning vary greatly. Set 1 moves through the material relatively quickly (because they already understand much of it) and achieve very high scores on their assessments. Set 2 progresses through the same material more slowly—they manage to cover most of it but don’t score quite as highly. By the time we reach Set 3, the pace is slower still, less content is fully mastered, and grades begin to drop dramatically. Set 4 students progress at the slowest pace, cover the least content, score very low, and are often disheartened.
What changed as we moved from Set 1 to Set 4? The pace at which content was studied and the amount of content effectively learned. What didn’t change? The curriculum requirements—every student is expected to learn the same topics and is given the same overall time to do so.
In the worst-case scenario, Set 1 ends up wasting several days of their school year repeating things they already knew how to do long ago. While this is far from ideal, at least their self-confidence in mathematics remains relatively intact. Meanwhile, Set 4 students have trudged their way through the same content, becoming increasingly demotivated in their learning, and very quickly end up despising mathematics.
Is everything I have said so far, an oversimplification of attainment grouping in schools? Only slightly.
Some qualifications: it is certainly possible that Set 2 might be ready to learn the same content as Set 1, but they would benefit from more time to master it thoroughly. Set 3 would be better served by revisiting more basic mathematics, while Set 4 should focus on mastering times tables, number bonds, and fractions. It is also worth noting that good teachers, while constrained by curriculum requirements, can adapt their lessons by adding stretch material for the high attaining students. In short, there are ways to make the most of the school system.
What about Home Education?
Let me be clear about what I am saying. I am not arguing that schools shouldn’t place children into age-based cohorts—this approach is understandable systemic pragmatism. I am also not claiming that dividing children into attainment groups is universally ineffective; in fact, I think attainment grouping is largely a good idea. My argument is that the school classroom itself has serious academic limitations because it largely requires all children to go through the same content in the same amount of time.
Home education has the potential to allow children to learn content that is entirely appropriate for their stage on their learning journey. More importantly, it changes the time constraints of traditional school, giving children the opportunity to engage with material deeply and thoroughly—without the wasted time that often occurs in school. Home education opens a world of possibilities for child-specific learning and gives parents the freedom to choose the content and methods that work best for their child.
In terms of the wider needs of the child, home education provides something that a school never can. Why? Because every child’s first and greatest need is for their parents. When children spend six hours per day, five days per week, for ten or more years of their life in school, the result is very little time spent with their mother and father. And, if we are honest, many children come home and spend the little time they have left on social media, video games, and similar distractions.
I am not suggesting that home education doesn’t come with its own unique challenges—it most certainly does—but it also offers exciting potential! In our technologically interconnected world, can we make learning more individualized for each child compared with a traditional school setting? Surely the answer must be yes.
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Scott McDowell
Founder of Maths Logos
At Maths Logos, our curriculum booklets include extensive prior-knowledge exercises that students complete at their own pace before each lesson, so they are primed to make the most of the two weekly live lessons. Most of our students’ independent practice is done outside of class time, allowing them to work at their own pace and develop the skills of independent learning.
For more information, including class fees, timetables, and dates, please see our Class Handbook.