Which of the following is a disadvantage of streaming?

• A. Lower-stream students become disheartened and may stop trying to improve
• B. Teachers may pay less attention to lower streams
• C. Transfers between streams are common
• D. Higher-stream students are ignored

Answer: (B)

Streaming groups students by ability, aiming to tailor instruction, but a key drawback is that teachers often devote more time and resources to higher-ability groups. When much of the energy goes to the top streams, lower-stream classes receive less feedback, fewer challenging tasks, and slower pace support, which can dampen motivation and learning progress. This attention gap creates a disadvantage for the lower streams and can widen achievement gaps over time. The other outcomes can occur in streaming, but they’re less directly tied to how teacher attention tends to be distributed; and the notion that higher-stream students are ignored runs counter to the typical pattern of attention bias toward higher streams.