What was your motivation to move away from streaming?

When I was HOD English I was involved in creating streamed classes with the idea that this provided pathways and you could better meet student needs. Then we offered a Year 9 mixed-ability class which contained students with a wide range of abilities.

When I started teaching that class, I became incredibly aware of the difference it was making, and when we got to the end of the year all the students wanted to carry on in that class and they all expected to go on until the end of Year 13. I started thinking about this in 2006/2007.

For me it was the joy of not thinking about the level a student would or should achieve before they’ve even walked through the door- it brought a whole lot more joy to learning. Once you start heading down that road of being student centred in the classroom, it’s really hard to argue that streaming benefits students - it benefits teachers.

What was the approach you took to making the shift?

The first thing we did was talk about our definition of streaming. Then we looked at some of the research and invited people in to speak to staff. We employed staff who had a belief system that aligned with de-streaming. Different faculties made adjustments at different year levels. We have made real progress in Year 9 and 10, close to fully implemented in Year 11, and it will be a further 3 to 5 year journey at Years 12 and 13 before we will have confidently unpacked what it really looks like and what the years and years of curriculum design have created.

You can get rid of streaming, but there’s a mindset change that needs to come in. I think it will take a long time, even within people who say they staunchly support de-streaming, to get to the point where we are really unpacking what it is.

I could not have done this if my Board was not 100% behind me. We provided flexibility in our course design, such as giving students opportunities to decide what standards they do, and how many internal or external standards they do. This is agency for these students.

It was important to keep open about what our goals and values are and having that absolutely central to our employment strategies because that’s the only way to keep the momentum going. Be strategic in your hiring of staff. Have a time frame to end streaming – don’t do it too quickly, but it can’t go on forever, and be open and clear about what that time frame should be.

What challenges did you face?

We lost some staff due to our intention to end streaming. What was surprising was how little pushback we got from parents. We got some but the large amount we thought we would get didn’t happen. Different staff take different amounts of time to accept the need to de-stream. Some staff felt upset because courses they had developed were removed, but these were removed because they provided no pathway for students the following year. There were some timetable issues, but you can’t justify strangling a timetable to allow streaming – it’s not equitable.

What does success look like?

We are starting to see less students telling us that they hate certain subjects. We are seeing an openness to students taking different courses.

However, we are not yet seeing a lift in achievement for the students we would like to see it for. But I think the results from de-streaming are going to take years to really start coming through – it will be an ongoing iterative process.

What advice would you give to others?

Have conversations with the people you need to have standing behind you – your Board, SLT. They need to be with you and singing from the same song sheet.