A recent research in the UK has brought out the issue that the mixed ability classes may be less than an ideal condition for a special needs student or slow learners to progress in the classroom.
In language lessons, they are unable to put words into sentences, taking in information & forming conclusions.
Part of the reason for bad behaviour is the bad role models that these disruptive students copied from. These role models include parents, agressive teachers/adults and from the street.
Rodney Tan
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Bad behaviour 'caused by mixed ability classes'
Mixed ability classes may be fuelling bad behaviour in schools, MPs have been warned.
By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Published: 4:10PM BST 13 Oct 2010
Tom Burkard, research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, said slower pupils became frustrated after being left behind by brighter classmates.
Addressing the Commons Education Select Committee, he warned that large numbers of children found lessons “totally and utterly meaningless” when they were pitched at the wrong level.
Quarter of teachers 'facing violence at school' Mr Burkard, a former special needs teacher, told how the majority of truants skipped school because they dreaded lessons “they didn’t like or a teacher they couldn’t stand”.
Psychologists also told MPs that indiscipline was being caused by aggressive behaviour among adults who acted as poor role models for young children.
The comments were made as part of a new select committee inquiry into standards of behaviour in state schools – and tactics employed to promote discipline in the classroom.
According to official figures, behaviour is still not good enough in more than a fifth of secondary schools in England. At least 700 state comprehensives are failing to keep order to a high standard, it was revealed.
Mr Burkard said mixed lessons – in which staff are forced to teach children with a range of academic abilities – were contributing to the problem.
Around half of all lessons in schools are in mixed ability groups, with children normally segregated only in a small number of academic subjects.
Mr Burkard said children at the lower end of the ability range or those diagnosed with special needs often had problems with "working memory" – the process of putting words into sentences, taking in information and forming conclusions.
“If you don’t have this ability and you are sat in a mixed ability class, which is relying to a large extent on your own investigations, you are going to find the whole procedure totally and utterly meaningless," he said.
“If you are lucky, the child will sit at the back of the class and do very little. If not, they are going to act up. This is one of the things we have to take into consideration.”
He said a drive – launched under Labour – to tailor education to individual children’s needs was “an absolute fantasy” because teachers did not have enough time.
However, Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, rejected the claims.
The union leader - former head of English at a north London comprehensive - told how mixed ability classes worked well in her former school while behaviour in the bottom sets was "appalling".
In evidence to MPs, others educationalists said parents were undermining schools' attempts to instill discipline in the classroom.
Many children copied behaviour they saw at home or on the street, it was claimed.
David Moore, an education consultant and former senior Ofsted inspector, told the hearing: "If you go into any shopping area on a Saturday and you watch parents interacting with their youngsters you can see why the youngsters behave the way that they do, because they model the behaviour of the adults."
Kate Fallon, general secretary of the Association of Educational Psychologists, said “less automatic respect” for people in authority may be to blame.
“I suspect we would see behaviours not terribly away far from here that might be described as low-level disruption, people talking over one another, interrupting, not always showing respect for the other speaker,” she said.
“So I think we can't say it's just children's behaviour. We actually have to look at it in context of the behaviour we see around us, lots of emoting, road rage - it's all there and it's not children's fault those things occur.”
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8061983/Bad-behaviour-caused-by-mixed-ability-classes.html
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