Clause 36
Education and Inspections Bill
4:00 pm
David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)
That is a helpful clarification, and it helps to support my next point. The review of the impact of setting—I shall leave streaming for the moment—was considered by the Education and Skills Committee in its report on the White Paper. Our information—the view of academics at the Institute of Education, university of London—was that the evidence on the impact of setting was mixed.
Schools set in certain subjects, and the subjects with the most incremental structure are those most likely to be taught in set groups, but even in such subjects, such as English and history, there is a powerful body of evidence to suggest that teaching in mixed-ability groups brings the best out of children in all ability bands. If the hon. Gentleman is backtracking from his previous adamant view that setting must be increased, that is helpful. I hope that he will look at the body of work done by the Institute of Education and tell us why the Conservative members of the Select Committee, in their minority report, deleted a section of the main report that referred to that evidence. That was an example of evidence-based policy making with a vengeance.