The impact of attainment-based grouping on students’ motivation and outcomes

Abstract

In the UK (and countries that chose to base their education system on the English one) students learning foreign languages (FL) at school are often divided into groups based on their performance or predicted grades. Such groups or sets are being implemented with the intention of providing nurturing environment to the most gifted, and a supporting, non-judgmental environment for the lower ability students. Most commonly, students are assigned to sets based on their SAT scores (in math and English), and once assigned, it is not easy to change the group one was assigned to. Moreover, students are moved between sets in sets not only based on their ability and performance, but also based on behavior. This practice often leads to teachers’ and students’ perception of lower sets as groups where hardly any learning can place, either due to extremely high volume of varied special needs students clustered together, or interruptions caused by students’ misbehavior. Simultaneously, higher set students frequently complain about unrealistic pace of the lessons, excessive volume of work and lack of explanations during their lessons, as the teachers tend to assume, they will simply figure it out on their own. This article presents the evidence from the UK and other countries suggesting that not only splitting the students based on their attainment or predicted grades creates unnecessary division by labelling students as “smart” and “dumb”, it also does not benefit students’ progress, harms their motivation, and, most importantly, limits their chances for development by limiting students’ future based on metrics which are not directly related to their FL performance (to in some secondary schools lower sets students are not allowed to take GCSE in FL not to harm schools’ statistics).