The aim is not to ignore the needs of the less able, but to respond to their needs by making challenging work simpler. Better incentives should be provided by the grading system. Implicit in the previous idea is a need for rethinking our grading system. Grades are only symbols of standards, not the standards themselves. In the ideal Essential school, grades as we know them would likely play a minor role -just as they play little or no role in athletics or drama, where students learn to judge their work by comparisons with models and earlier efforts and the demands of the performance.
Progress comes through successive approximations.
Assessment should teach standards, not simply apply them. A system that encourages the less able by initially rewarding effort and progress. All students would be expected to do the same work, but the grade systems used would be different and dependent on entry-level ability. This system may seem to resemble tracking but actually heads in the opposite direction. Rather than a system of rigid parallel tracks, the aim and expectation is that students will move up.