Perfect Placement

It's not about ability, it's about need

Podcast is AI generated, and will make mistakes. Interactive transcript available in the podcast post.

---

In case you missed it, we’re spending this year recruiting 60 schools with an ambition to transform maths outcomes for their students, and make failure obsolete.

If you would like your school to join them:

School network leaders, use this form to learn more.

School leaders, including subject leaders, use this form to learn more.

We will build out programmes for individual teachers in the future, and if you would like to be kept informed, you can express interesting using this form.

---

‘Placement’ is a controversial topic.

Setting, streaming, tracking - whatever you call it, the idea of putting children into groups that segregate them by supposed ability can be a hot button.

I’m going to ignore the recent EEF findings on setting versus mixed ability, which others have already written about eloquently, and instead simply ask the question:

What happens if a student is placed incorrectly?

Say School A uses Key Stage 2 results and their own baseline assessment to arrange children into groups upon arrival in Year 7. Jonny isn’t secure in KS2 mathematics. He finds place value and a myriad of topics difficult to understand. Sarah is in the same maths group and is already firm in every topic that will be taught in the first half term of the academic year.

School B also uses Key Stage 2 results, but instead of their own baseline they use the Connecting Maths Concepts Placement Test. Students are given tests covering CMC Levels B to E to identify the correct starting point in the programme. Jonny is placed in Level C. Sarah is placed in Level E. A new student, Tommy joins a week later and is given a start point of Level C, Lesson 16. All three students are now in groups with other students who need the same starting point.

What is the difference between school’s own baseline and the CMC placement test?

The placement test searches for each student’s individual entry point into the programme; the point where they begin to learn knowledge they aren’t firm on.

School B avoids the situation of School A, where children either don’t have the necessary prerequisites to learn, or already know the topics covered by their lessons.

Connecting Maths Concepts, like all Englemann’s Direct Instruction programmes, prioritises placing students at a starting point where they are always learning something new, and have all the prior knowledge required to access it. This means all students can make progress within the academic year.

Jonny has come to Year 7 further behind, but is given a starting level pitched so he can close existing knowledge gaps, and then rapidly progress from there.

Sarah has come to Year 7 further ahead, and so is given a starting position further down the track, where she can continue to build on what she already knows.

Both students are in a position to make progress. Jonny isn’t in a group where he’s unable to access what Sarah can, and Sarah is not kept from learning new knowledge because the lesson is pitched lower to assist Jonny.

Perfect placement of students is the critical starting point to ensure all children make progress in mathematics. Connecting Maths Concepts achieves perfect placement.

In a primary context at the Athena Learning Trust, we used the CMC placement tests to identify each student’s starting point on the programme, and then used this information to create the maths groupings. We identified Year 5 pupils who needed a lower entry point in the programme, and Year 2 pupils needed a higher entry point. Since the schools had a history of cross year groupings, this meant in Mathematics we were able to have children in different year groups be part of the same maths lessons. For example, one Year 2 pupil was in a Maths groups with Year 3 students for mathematics, and we had some Year 5 pupils with Year 6 pupils, and vice versa, based upon their placement test results.