Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Updating the streaming debate

When it comes to education, one size does not fit all. Nobody can be in any doubt about the fact that young people differ with respect to their aptitudes and attitudes and accordingly benefit from different teaching/learning approaches. But streaming is a blunt-edged tool with which to deliver school education that suits every learner. It uses a ranking system based on averaged-out measures of ability. This works quite well for kids who are simply good at everything (gifted) or who are pretty hopeless at everything for whatever reason (often a matter of attitude rather than aptitude). It does not work so well for kids who are very good at some things (talented) but not at others. To make streaming really work, you would have to stream classes for each subject separately. So a kid might be in Year 7A for one subject, 7D for another, and 7F for yet another. This just isn’t practical.

Differentiated instruction is a form of streaming within a classroom. The teacher knows who is good, who is ‘average’ and who is engaged in an uphill struggle in various areas such as literacy and maths. S/he has to cater for all three groups. In practice this means involving the ‘lower’ group in remedial activities while providing extension and enrichment activities for the ‘upper’ group. Differentiated instruction has been around for some time now and does not appear to draw the flak streaming does, even though it is more pointed than streaming. It is said to be hard work for the teacher but a well-organised professional educator does not shy away from a bit of extra elbow-grease to produce discernible benefits for her/his learners. Besides, once you have a system set up, it’s a piece of cake.

Gifted and talented youngsters have been receiving a lot of attention over the past couple of decades. They too are widely regarded as a ‘special needs group’ alongside kids with physical, sensory and learning disabilities. This may raise some eyebrows but any apparent paradox is resolved by bearing in mind that a kid with an IQ of 150 is not achieving his/her potential in most classrooms despite having as much right to do so as any other kid. G&T has become a respected subdiscipline in education and gets nasty labels attached to it by only a few ideologues. It’s really just a matter of differentiated instruction.

Get rid of the word ‘streaming’ and most of the controversy around it vaporises while leaving you free to pursue its goals. This is one instance where you can have your cake and eat it!

Basic education is defined by UNESCO as the first 9 or 10 years of schooling and typically involves 6 or 7 years of primary schooling followed by 3 or so years of lower secondary schooling. It seeks to inculcate essential life skills such as literacy and numeracy (‘literacy’ now being expanded to include e.g. scientific literacy at a very fundamental level) and a broad understanding of how society and its institutions operate (so-called citizenship education). At lower secondary level, kids are exposed to more formal ways of thinking within subject frameworks e.g. in science. By the time they reach the end of the lower secondary cycle, they should be aware of where their strengths and interests lie and in what direction they are headed with regard to career development. Differentiated instruction has a major role to play in basic education as there are curricular outcomes that all learners are supposed to achieve. Some will need more help than others.

Beyond basic education lies the upper secondary level, This varies in structure between jurisdictions but there are two fundamental models, the continental European and the British-derived. The first of these involves a procedure called tracking, which may be considered a variant of streaming. Based on middle school results, pupils are ‘tracked’ into different curricular packages. Typically, there is a general academic track, a science-intensive track (usually the ‘elite’ track, certainly in Asian countries, and others e.g. Turkey), a technical track heading students in the direction of careers such as engineering and medical lab work, and a vocational track which usually involves leaving school (hence sometimes not regarded as a ‘track’ at all) and entering careers-based education and training in traditional areas such as plumbing and joinery. Some would call this approach the ultimate in streaming, and yet it is generally positively regarded as a great way of catering for individual differences. Note that it is essential that tracking goes hand in hand with both careers education and careers guidance.

In the British-derived system, there is supposedly free subject choice at upper secondary level but in practice many schools operate their own internal tracking system. There are usually classes at Years 12 and 13 level where students are taught examination-oriented traditional academic subjects such as the ‘three sciences and maths’ combo with a view to helping them get into competitive-entry university programmes. Is this ‘streaming’? Well, sort of, but so what? That’s how the ‘elite’ professions such as those in the biomedical field work so why should this not be the case at high school? Anyway, let’s avoid the ideological issue by sticking to the word ‘tracking’…… problem solved!

Lower secondary and upper secondary schooling are institutionally separate in the European systems and their clones. Tracking may involve whole institutions such as science-intensive high schools in Japan and Turkey. In these systems, teaching at the upper secondary level is a competitive-entry job with high status. It usually requires a higher degree (Hons or a Master’s) in the subject area. The UK introduced a ’Sixth Form College’ system half a century ago as an ‘elite’ school subsector although the norm remains a comprehensive high school running from lower through to upper secondary level.

It is critically important that lower secondary schooling tells kids where their strengths and weaknesses lie for the transition to upper secondary schooling to achieve its desired goals. Giving everyone an ‘A’ in Year 10 science fools nobody except perhaps the slower kids whom it does a disservice by misinforming them about their ability and hence encouraging them to have unrealistic expectations when it comes to subject selection at upper secondary level and, ultimately, career development. Tracking systems tend to be ahead of the game in this regard as they use hard evidence from exams to assign kids to tracks.

Of course, there is only a problem with tracking if some tracks are seen as being for ‘winners’ and others for ‘losers’. There are elite tracks as noted above, but that does not make the other tracks ‘losing’ tracks. In Germany, the technical education track became an ‘elite’ one in its own right back in the 19^th century, and there’s nothing second-rate about the vocational track either (they don’t give away Master’s Certificates in Brewing, for instance!). In a tracking system, everyone can be a winner in the sense of entering a pathway commensurate with their abilities and interests and leading to a satisfying, well-paid career.

The streaming debate is old hat. We have moved on. NZ has a British-derived system with a lot of de facto tracking going on in its high schools. Perhaps we need to look more closely at the notion of tracking and ask ourselves whether we should move more in the European direction.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek is a retired academic who has produced lots of journal articles and four edited volumes about this kind of stuff. Feedback welcome at bv_54@hotmail.com