Raising Schooling Attainments by Grouping Pupils Within Each Class

The object of this Note is to caution against accepting, at least in the context of English schooling policy, conclusions drawn by a group of Canadian educational researchers from their survey (a 'meta-analysis' - as they call it) of a mass of earlier classroom studies which, they say, on average significantly favour - not 'whole-class teaching' - but dividing pupils within each class into small groups according to their ability ('homogeneous within-class ability-grouping'). Issues of this kind have for long been of great concern to educational policy makers; in simplistic terms: those more anxious to advance social egalitarianism have tended to favour mixed-ability teaching of the whole class, while others - more worried about academic (or 'cognitive') attainments - have preferred some form of division of pupils according to 'general ability' (in whatever way that may be ascertained) or according to attainments in particular subjects.