A recent David Didau blog got me thinking about this. When people talk about ‘Teaching to the Top’, what exactly do they mean? Do they mean that teachers should pitch their lesson to the top end of the achievement range in the class they are teaching? Or do they mean that teachers should teach to the top of the achievement range that is appropriate for the year/phase of education that the students are in? Let’s look at an example at GCSE that would fit both of those: say I am teaching a Year 11 French class that includes students working at GCSE Grades 3 to 9, I would therefore be pitching my lesson at Grades 7 to 9 and then supporting those students who are working at the lower grades so they can reach ‘the top’. Or, ignoring the ability of the students in my specific class – the second scenario above – I would still be teaching to Grades 7-9, as those grades represent the top of the GCSE standard, and my students are in Year 11. On one level, that sounds like admirably high standards. But there’s a big problem with it.
First of all, this way of ‘teaching to the top’ conflicts with another important and well-understood duty that teachers have. Teachers Standards Part One number 2 requires teachers to:
‘Be aware of pupils’ capabilities and their prior knowledge, and plan teaching to build on these’.
Many teachers know, and I think agree with, this famous quotation from the psychologist David Ausubel:
‘The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly’.
‘Accordingly’. Both of those statements call on teachers to take careful account of students’ starting points when planning individual lessons and sequences of lessons, do they not? That feels to me to be in direct conflict with the notion of ‘teaching to the top’ described above.
The Ofsted Handbook doesn’t say much about where to pitch teaching. It talks generally about teachers ‘challenging’ students with ‘demanding’ work. What constitutes ‘demanding’ work, then? If I’m typically working at GCSE Grade 3 and my teacher gives me work to do that is at the top end of Grade 4, isn’t that work likely to be pretty demanding for me? What is the point of me being typically given work at Grades 7-9 to do? Surely the gap between where I am at Grade 3 and the Grades 7-9-level work would be too great, so I would be very likely to flounder? And get put off?
You might say, well there’s a clear requirement on my teacher to support me so that I can manage that high-level work? Well, yes, that might be feasible if I were the only person in the class…
Let’s be realistic here: going back to the Year 11 French class mentioned above, let’s say we have the following grade distribution in the class: 3 students working at Grades 8-9; 3 students working at Grade 7; 5 students working at Grades 5-6; 5 students working at Grades 4-5; 5 students working at Grade 4; and 2 students working at Grade 3 – this might be a typical GCSE mixed-ability class. Is it really feasible, or even desirable, for me to pitch my lessons at the level where only 6 of my 23 students are generally working? So I set all this work that is incredibly demanding – surely too demanding – for most of my class and then I have to tear around helping individual students every time I give them something to do, because the work is clearly too hard for them? Or do I have to have a constant source of pre-prepared support materials at different levels to hand out to most students in the class, as a scaffold? With all of the huge workload implications that brings, it’s surely not on.
Most teachers I have met will sign up to the call to challenge their students by setting a high standard and providing work that stretches them – absolutely. But isn’t it about getting the level of challenge right for individual students? Which is clearly breathtakingly hard in a class with a lot of students and a wide spread of ability – indeed, it may be the toughest challenge teachers face, alongside teaching students who present a significant behaviour challenge every day.
Why would we teach to the top of an individual class anyway? Grouping is often fairly random; it is entirely random in a GCSE subject where there is only one class that is made up of everyone who opted for the subject, or where are more classes but they are all mixed-ability. And even where classes are ‘set’ the range of ability within the class can be very wide. If I’m working at Grade 3 and the top end in my class is Grade 7, I would presumably get teaching pitched at Grades 6-8; my friend is also working at Grade 3, but he is in another class where the ability range is narrower, Grades 3-5. So do his lessons get pitched at Grades 4-6? Sounds to me like he is likely to be better off than me, although he too may well struggle – if not as much. I fear that the mantra ‘Teach to the top’ risks leaving many students behind.
The other issue that Teach-to-the-Top creates is that it is likely to prevent many students from experiencing the sense of regular success that is crucial to them being motivated to invest in a subject over the long term. This was a key point in my last blog on self-efficacy – students need to experience regular success so that they build an I-can-do-this feeling about the subject; getting the level of challenge right is essential for creating that virtuous circle: I can do this, I will keep at it etc…
All of this reminds us that teaching is hard – Dylan Wiliam summed it up beautifully when he said that teaching is so complex and challenging (I’m paraphrasing) that it would take more than one lifetime to master it.
Where David Didau got to on this issue was to recommend seeking ‘the highest outcomes’ for every individual student and then constantly trying to uncover and fill their knowledge gaps, in order to help them get there. Same problem, surely, if by seek the highest outcomes for every student he is advocating teaching GCSE Grade 9 level work to students who are working at GCSE Grade 3 – he may not be, his blog doesn’t really make it clear to me.
Take-aways
• We need to get the level of challenge of the work we set right; there is no point in giving a GCSE Grade 3 student a constant diet of GCSE Grade 8-9 work to do – the gap between where they are and the level of the work is too great
• Getting the level of challenge just right is very challenging. Too easy and there’s no learning; too demanding, and students are likely to become demotivated and give up
• Success breeds success: where students, especially those who are generally working at the lower attainment levels, experience regular success in a subject, they are far more likely to keep at it; and the more they keep at it, the better they will do
• So we need to be careful about what we mean by teaching to the top. If we mean, disregarding students’ current level when planning challenging work for them to do, that’s just not right
• But if we mean teaching individual students to the top of what we think they are capable of as individuals, fair enough. I’m with David Ausubel.
