If you score “above average” in one of those online intelligence tests on social media, does it give you a warm, self-satisfied feeling, without really thinking about it?

Now think about what it’s like to score a consistent “below average” from Year 4 onwards in your school work. The negative impact that this could have is horrifying.

The adverse effects of over-simplified scoring and labels have huge implications for pupils and teachers. It does not have to be that way. Two specific problems need urgent examination, if you’ll excuse the pun.

The first problem is the myth of “average”. As Todd Rose puts it in his book The End of Average, “the concept of average as a yardstick for measuring individuals has been so thoroughly ingrained in our minds that we rarely question it seriously”.

There is no such thing as an average person. Tasked with reducing the high mortality rate of their fighter pilots in the Second World War, US Air Force researchers realised that they had designed their cockpits to suit the “average-sized” person. But in reality, after studying 4,000 pilots based on 10 size-profiling criteria, they discovered that not a single airman fitted within the average range on all of those 10 dimensions. As a result, cockpits were redesigned to make equipment adjustable (straps, seat heights, pedals and so on), meaning pilots could reach controls more easily, thus saving lives.

Similarly, one-size-fits-all teaching doesn’t work in schools. Based on any range of profiling criteria, each child will present a different profile that maps in a spiky way. The cognitive skills of executive function, reasoning, memory and speed are highly relative and variable. A pupil who is having difficulty with maths doesn’t automatically struggle with literacy. Understanding nuances of individual strengths and weaknesses is key to effective teaching.

The second problem is the effect that labelling pupils has on teachers, school structures and systems. Fixed-ability thinking (that this child is always below average) encourages teachers to see differential performance as natural and inevitable. It diverts attention from those school and classroom processes that inhibit or enable learning to take place.

Neuroscience suggests that a strength in one skill tells us little about strengths in other skills. Yet schools still seek to categorise and label early, using subjective judgements of personality and loaded terms such as “stubborn”, “careless” and “hard-working” to explain performance deviation. This, apart from anything else, reinforces marginalisation of learners with learning difficulties.

Ranking is a measurement tool, not a teaching tool. We need to repair the damage done to the mindsets of teachers, and trust and invigorate their sense of empowerment to promote learning using expertise and professional judgement.

We should rethink the idea that scoring against averages in a bell curve is the be-all and end-all. It doesn’t give the information we most need to be an effective teacher supporting individuals in their learning. It isn’t accurate, sufficient or nuanced. Nor does it give children joy or an empowered sense of achievement, save perhaps for the top 1 per cent.

Redressing these systemic failures can support progress for all.

Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders

This article originally appeared in the 25 September 2020 issue under the headline “Why the law of averages must be broken”