Streamed classes will create bitter pupils, warns Drabble

The writer Margaret Drabble has spoken out against introducing more setting in schools by claiming it causes "lasting bitterness" among pupils in lower sets.

Tony Blair is urging more schools to introduce setting - under which pupils are taught in different groups according to their ability - in his education reforms.

Ministers say struggling pupils get left behind in mixed ability classes - and brighter pupils are not stretched. However, Ms Drabble, biographer and author of 16 novels, writing in Report - the magazine of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, warned it could instil a sense of failure and fear into pupils.

"Clever children in a heavily streamed school may benefit in the short term in grades (and the school may benefit, too) but they often lose out in social skills," she said.

"Education is not a solitary process. It's a collaborative undertaking: it should teach you to navigate as well as score. And good friends across the social spectrum are worth as much as higher grades."

Ms Drabble's comments follow a government inquiry into the teaching of reading in primary schools, published earlier this week, that supported the idea of setting in the early years and when children start compulsory schooling at the age of five.

Jim Rose, former head of inspections at Ofsted, who led the inquiry, argued it could be better to teach groups according to the speed with which they learnt.

However, Ms Drabble said: "At a school reunion a few years ago, I was surprised by the lasting bitterness of the girls who had been placed in the lower stream. That surely could have been avoided." She conceded that, for older children, some setting could be to their advantage.

However, she added: "It remains my instinct to believe that setting can be applied thoughtfully rather than brutally, discreetly rather than punitively, and that a sense of community can be preserved throughout the class and the school as a whole."

She said that- during her school years - she learnt far more from a friend with learning disabilities than she ever did from any of her maths teachers. "All I ever learned from them was failure and fear," she added.