Bottom Set Citizen: Ability Grouping in Schools - Meritocracy’s Undeserving

While research evidence shows the negative impact of ability grouping on children, this book suggests that the reasonbehind this is the values of empire that governments, schools and many parents still uphold, promoting competition and hierarchies over and above ethical principles on the education of society’s most vulnerable, our children.

Paula Ambrossi is a lecturer at the Institute of Education, University College London. Her experience as a Modern Foreign Languages teacher in secondary education, followed by almost 20 years as tutor and researcher in Primary Teacher Education, has allowed her to reflect and write on topics related to pedagogy and philosophy of education. Her recent work includes Language and Culture in Foreign Language Teaching, in Exploring Education and Childhood: From Current Certainties to New Visions (2015), Mastering Primary Languages (Mastering Primary Teaching) by Paula Ambrossi and Darnelle Constant- Shepherd (2018), Sustaining Hegemony: Educational Use of Photographs Representing Human Distress (2019), and The Languages We Teach and the Empires We Embrace: Addressing Decolonization Through the Gaze of the Empire (2024).