Categorisations
Sociology: AQA A Level, topic 2.3.3
Banding, Streaming and Setting
Banding, streaming, and setting involve organising pupils according to their actual or predicted ability.
Labelling
- Banding, streaming, and setting involve organising pupils according to their actual or predicted ability.
- Such policies are often linked to pupil labelling.
Ball
- Ball found that those pupils in higher sets and streams were ‘warmed up’ to achieve highly, while those in lower streams and sets were ‘cooled out’ to encourage them to follow lower status vocational and practical courses that require lower levels of academic success.
Keddie
- Streaming can have a negative impact on lower ability pupils’ learner identities and encourage the self-fulfilling prophecy, including the development of anti-school attitudes.
- Keddie found that lower-stream pupils were often not given the same access to knowledge as those in higher streams, leading to further underachievement.
Educational Triage
Educational triage refers to pupils being divided into groups based on predicted performance by the school.
Gillborn and Youdell
- Gillborn and Youdell found that schools tend to divide pupils into three groups based on how well they expect them to do, this is known as ‘educational triage’.
The groups
- The first group is made up of pupils who are likely to succeed without any extra help.
- In the second group are pupils who might succeed with extra help.
- The third group is the ‘no-hopers’ who are unlikely to succeed even if they are given help.
Explanation
- Educational triage is encouraged by the pressures on teachers and schools to obtain good results for the school league tables and other outward expressions of school success.
Consequences
- Educational triage places the emphasis on those people with a higher chance of success, while it can be argued that the ‘no-hopers’ (who are often from disadvantaged backgrounds) are neglected.
Test yourself on Categorisations
Who found that lower-stream pupils were often not given the same access to knowledge as those in higher streams, leading to further underachievement?
Why is educational triage encouraged in schools?