Quote Originally Posted by Maciamo
I understand that Japanese schools don't divide classes by abilities because that is also the way it was in my schools in Europe - and gaps were indeed huge, making the brighest students bored to death or leaving the slow ones well-behind depending on the speed adopted by the teacher. Usually the class' difficulty depended only on the teacher's personality, with some hard ones that were feared by most and some easy ones that were longed by the lazy average.

I would also have preferred a division by ability, esp. that we had about 8 classes (of about 30 students) per grade in secondary school. At least we were divided by options. One class for the "Latin-Maths", one for the "Latin-Greek", one for the "Maths-Science", one for the "Science-Modern Languages", etc. That makes it more difficult to divide, except for common subjects like geography, history, literature, etc.
Ahah! I dunno if it was just my school but it was the opposite. Classes were by ability, 1 being top. Classes were grouped into topics (language, sciences, arts). They had different teachers for each topic (teaching their specialised topic). The kids stayed in the same class with the same people (cept for PE where they would split boys/girls).

Its very annoying how little power schools and teachers hold on the education of their students. The Ministry of Education decides what books, the curriculum etc for the whole country. I do remember reading that some regions are able to change this if they wish.

I wouldn't mind 'streaming' (grouping classes by ability) in Australia. It works fine in Europe, would be good here too.