"No, it just didn't work": a teacher's reflections on all-attainment teaching

Setting - the practice by which learners are allocated to different classes on the basis of perceived ability - is a social justice issue. Despite overwhelming evidence that, overall, setting is educationally harmful and in discriminatory ways, the practice is almost universal in English secondary mathematics classrooms. To gain insight into this apparent contradiction, we offer the story of a single teacher's ultimate rejection of all-attainment teaching.