On 29 Sep, 14:01, Kate XXXXXX 
wrote:
> Philosophically, I feel that the comprehensive ideal is excellent.
> Experience has taught me that they rarely work the way they should.

Yes, and Yes.  I think that streaming is inevitable and right and
proper, and it is obvious that doing it at the subject level makes
more sense than in whole-school lumps.

Take maths.  There are 3 things I would expect a maths education to
do:

1.  Teach real, hard, maths to people who have the aptitude and can
apply it for things like engineering, physics, etc.  And to breed the
next generation of mathematics.

2.  Teach mathematical appreciation to those who can't actually do
maths.  It is important in life to know what things are calculable and
what aren't.  To know that it should be possible to predict, in
advance, how much material a tradesman will need to obtain so they
can't pull the wool over your eyes when quoting.  To know that there
is a way to work out probabilities and averages, and that they can be
reliable indicators of abstract ideas.  Even if you can't do the sums
yourself, knowing that people can makes a lot of the world less scary

3.  Provide practice at core arithmetic for those for whom counting
and adding up will always be a challenge.

Now, in our modern world, we only appear to have one subject on the
syllabus for this.  Yet I would guess that the proportions of the 3
types in most schools are 15, 80, and 5 % respecitively.  There ought
to be 3 alternative subjects on the timetable, really.

Now consider the kids who are good at art and music.  I bet there is a
similar split between those who can compose original tunes, appreciate
and perform written music, and who could not carry a tune in an enamel
bucket.

And I can be relatively certain that the 15% for one is not the same
15% for the other.  I know this because I am in the first group for
Maths, and the last one for music.