UK Methodology Resources

UK Methodology Resources

A brief review

Anita Pincas

In my thorough library and UK internet searches for some data about multigrade teaching, especially to discover what approaches are taken to teaching methods, I have found very little indeed, confirming the impression that this is a highly neglected area.

Extent of multigrade teaching in the UK

I have inspected government school statistics, especially related to PLASC – the pupil level annual school census. This gives only limited information about mixed classes, as this quotation from a letter sent to me by the School Statistical (Inc Workforce Unit) of the UK government Department for Education and Science, http://www.dfes.gov.uk/index.htm

PLASC does collect information on a sample of classes conducted on the day of the Census. For selected classes we collect the class year group and key stage, together with the number of pupils and teachers in the class. We do collect the number of classes with "mixed year group" - but we cannot tell the difference in age between the youngest and oldest pupils in the class. If it would be useful, we could provide the number of schools that reported classes with mixed year groups (although this will not represent all classes across all schools).

PLASC is a statutory requirement on schools under section 537A of The Education Act 1996. Amongst the data items collected, the2005 Schedule lists the following information about each pupil:

·  gender

·  date of birth

·  current unique pupil number

·  surname

·  first name

·  ethnic group

·  date of admission to the school

·  first language

·  post code of the pupil's home.

PLASC provides essential information needed to understand what's going on in schools and ensure that national policy is developed sensibly and appropriately.

PLASC underpins important benchmarking data in the national pupil database and publications such as the Autumn Package and PANDAs. LEAs, other government departments, external agencies and educational researchers all make important use of the information. A typical example of PLASC statistics is provided in the Appendix 1 to this report, and it will be seen that figures for mixed age/level classes are provided, but that they do not indicate how wide the gaps are between the ages of the pupils or how many children are of varied ages/levels, and so on. The guidelines for filling in the school census form says only:

Mixed year group classes are those containing pupils from more than one National Curriculum year group. The presence of the odd pupil who has been held back or advanced a year, and so is of a different chronological age to the rest of the class, does not render the class as a mixed year group class.

It would seem to be the generally accepted view that there are very many multigrade classes in the UK and that the number is rising. It therefore seems curious that there is not more attention paid to the issues. Mike Carter, Chairman of the National Small Schools' Forum has provided useful informal comments in personal communication: [http://www.nssf.co.uk/forum/index.htm]

I suspect that thinking about multi-grade, mixed-age teaching has been linked largely to secondary education, where there is very little of it. Another issue it gets muddled with is mixed-ability teaching. However, there has been a very strong minority of schools throughout the UK who have taught pupils is groups of more than one age, for a very long time. These classes have tended to reside in small schools because of the demographics, however, following the Plowden Report in the late 60s, a number of large schools decided to mix ages in their classes on purpose. Some still do, but on the whole most primary schools with under 150 pupils will have some degree of mixed-age teaching and a number of larger schools will do too. Over the last 50 years a large number of small rural schools have closed, although the rate has slowed in England, so there were more mixed-age classes in the past.

His paper for the NSSF website (“What do we know about small schools?” August, 2003), cites Thorpe (1994) “Subject training for teachers often takes no account of mixed-age classes or the small school context.” (Thorpe, R. et al. 1994 "INSET in Small Primary Schools in Wales" Aberystwyth University and the Welsh Office. )

He further criticises the National Curriculum and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies because they have limited the small school's advantages in providing a locally relevant curriculum, which was identified as a significant feature of small schools, since, among other problems, “A lot of planning is needed due to mixed ages and medium and short-term planning can seldom be undertaken with other teachers”. Yet, he believes that many pupils can benefit from being in mixed age classes. “Younger children can often gain from others. The able can be stimulated by their elders while weaker children can gain by working with the younger children.”

On the other hand, a senior lecturer and teacher trainer in the Institute of Education, University of London, replied to my query for information about multigrade classes by saying “I think there is very little of this in UK”, and of the other dozen Institute lecturers I asked, not one was able to provide any relevant information or contacts.

One useful source of information is a very recent master’s degree thesis on multigrade teaching: by Judith Stringer "How do multigrade teachers manage monograde resources" M.A. dissertation, 2005, Nottingham Trent University, School of Education, who was one of the few who replied to my questionnaire, and who writes:

In this structured interview study multigrade teachers were asked how they manage to effectively teach their classes using monograde resources. The classes were formed owing to low enrolments and involved teaching at least two year groups for the entire day. When asked how they adapt resources the respondents described a variety of methods mostly involving the adaptation of government strategies into their own long and medium term plans, teaching year groups concurrently or consecutively and combining similar subject units. Most teachers organise their students by ability and use and adapt schemes to allow independent learning. This study found that monograde resources are of limited use in the multigrade setting. Several teachers work in cramped multi-purpose rooms, one school has no field, the very small schools do not have separate halls or dining rooms and many of the respondents work without the added assistance of adult classroom support. The results show that multigrade teachers require assistance from advisors and the government who have nothing to offer this increasing educational setting. The teachers revealed a number of special qualities over and above those identified as effective teaching qualities, necessary to achieve effective teaching of multigrade classes.

There is clearly a great deal to be done, both in gathering data about the extent of multigrade teaching in the UK, and to raise awareness of it, both regarding its benefits and the problems that under-supported teachers may be facing.

Methodological advice to teachers of multigrade classes

To discover what teachers felt about their classroom actitivites, I sent the Questionnaire in Appendix 2 to several dozen UK schools. Only 3 responses were received. These are the 3 results:

EXPERIENCE

The teachers had 3, 10 and 20 years of teaching experience.

ICT

Two had no specific training in teaching mixed age classes or in the use of ICT. One had been to short ICT training courses aimed at single age classes.

But they are all well equipped, with Internet access, Smartboard, Interactive whiteboard, TV connected to a video player and DVD player, selection of tapes and DVDs, cassette/radio, music system, laptops, digital camera, overhead projector, microscope and sensing equipment linked to computer, and a good selection of computer software.

The key problem is that much of this ICT has to be shared by more than one teacher, and often teachers have to move to other rooms because of this.

MATERIALS

All of them use the Internet which provides many worksheets and ideas which they collect and adapt for their classes. All of them spend a lot of time creating their own materials.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

All report their methods are much the same as in any other classroom. They use whole class, individual, pair, age groupings, or mixed age groupings with the older ones leading. They often play class games, quizzes etc. One uses the “buddy” system where a learner is partnered from the other age group, but they also often choose their own working partner depending on the task or ability. They tend to move the children around a lot.

Mostly children work and sit in age groups but there are some exceptions, e.g. for different subjects like Religious Education where the lessons are for all age children of a specific religion, or if one child is ahead of his/her age level.

They all seem to favour treating their class is one whole class, yet they report they have to separate them for science and maths and literacy, and also for what they call working groups and homework, which vary according to age and ability. They are limited in how much they can move the furniture around but they do move the children around the furniture. The impression is that the teachers do think of the multigrade class as one class socially, but not in terms of how they manage the subject teaching. The clearest statement was “There are very few occasions when I can teach the whole class; I give general input then go to each group to give additional support and advice. Music lessons are probably the only ones when we work as a whole class. “

COLLABORATION IN CLASS

Not all the responses seem consistent with what is said about classroom management, e.g. “We often group the children according to level for Numeracy and Literacy. For subjects such as Art, DT and Science for example, we do work more frequently across the ages and levels with a more able child acting as scribe”, which seems to contradict the need to separate them for science lessons. One commented that mixed the ages for ICT enabled the older ones to gain confidence by helping the younger ones, while another says that owing to insufficient space the children work with their own year groups in ICT. Grouping is also affected by different exam needs.

LEARNER INDEPENDENCE

They all aim for this, especially noting that ICT helps. One said that the older year groups often missed out on her personal attention and become more and more independent but they can always ask for help.

IN THE PLAYGROUND

These are small schools with only 50 or so children and all play together, often the older ones “mothering” the younger infant and reception children.

Websites offering advice to teachers

A very wide search of materials from the UK Department for Education and Science, with numerous related resources such as Teachernet, the government’s “standards” website, and other organisations catering for teachers’ needs, indicates that the issue of multigrade teaching is barely acknowledged. There is a considerable attention to effective classroom management and to mixed ability teaching, but only occasional, very brief, passing reference to what is in the UK called mixed age, or mixed level, teaching. The search has not found attempts to discover how much ICT is in use in mixed age classrooms.

The key page from the Teachernet website at

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachingandlearning/library/mixedage/

is so brief that it is worth citing in full, as an exemplar [indeed the only exemplar] found where an overview and some advice is offered to teachers. There is, at the end, a reference to government statistics and case studies, which are disappointing (see further on this matter below).

Mixing it

Mixed-age teaching -in other words, teaching a mixture of ages, year groups and abilities in one class -is perhaps more common than might be expected. All local education authorities in England have schools operating mixed-age classes, and, according to the DfES, the number of schools taking this approach is rising.

There's little doubt that the classroom-management skills of teachers with mixed-age classes are potentially stretched with more frequency than those of other teachers, but in reality, even mono-age classes require teachers with mixed-age and ability skills [sic- my italics AP].

Positive benefits

Studies from previous decades have shown that children can develop cognitively and socially through interacting with older and younger children. One important fact to have emerged is that children benefit greatly from the opportunity to become an 'expert' for younger children to learn from. Younger children look to the older ones to teach them, and older children view the younger ones as in need of teaching and support. Educationalists have argued that this can nurture thinking skills, problem solving skills, vocabulary and other social competencies.

In the mixed-age classroom where this level of interaction between children has been effectively achieved, there is likely to be a greater general sense of cooperation. Friendship groupings can cross traditional age boundaries and younger children can often view older children as part of the hierarchy of authority in their school when they share the same classroom. This inevitably leads to a diminished need for teacher intervention in the event of bad behaviour.

Perhaps not insignificant is the fact that mixed-age teaching resembles more closely the family setting that children with siblings find themselves in at home. Growing up with other children of various ages means that they are more than capable of adapting to mixed ages in the classroom.