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Despite extensive research on attainment grouping, the impact of attainment grouping on pupil attainment remains poorly understood and contested. This paper presents evidence from a study conducted with 2944 12–13 year olds, from 76 schools in England, who were allocated to between‐class attainment groups ('setting') in English and mathematics over the first 2 years of secondary schooling. After controlling for prior attainment, pupils in the top set performed significantly better than pupils in the middle and bottom sets in both English and mathematics. The findings indicate a widening gap in attainment, especially in the case of English. Findings, especially in the case of mathematics, provide more evidence of a relative benefit for pupils placed in top sets than a relative detriment for those in bottom sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of low attainment in mathematics has been an increasingly prominent feature of the policy discourse in England over the last 60 years; however, evidence from comparative studies indicates that little progress has been made in finding a solution. In this paper, we analyse the changing policy discourse of low attainment in mathematics through the main reports and speeches published in England, beginning with the Newsom Report, Half Our Future, in 1963, and continuing to the present day. We chart the evolving perspectives on the nature of ability, expectations, curriculum ideology and frame of reference through the changing language used in these documents, noting tensions and inconsistencies which arise through continuing lack of clarity about definitions and assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a short fragment published for the first time with his lost notebook in 1988 (Ramanujan, The lost notebook and other unpublished papers (Narosa, New Delhi, 1988)), Ramanujan offered two beautiful identities, associated, respectively, with the classical circle and divisor problems. In fact, they are analogues, with an additional variable, but not generalizations, of classical identities associated with these two famous problems. After Ramanujan's death in 1920, the lost notebook and fragments of papers of Ramanujan were sent to Hardy. We do not have any official record of what was included in this mailing, but it is likely that the aforementioned fragment was included in this parcel. If so, then it is possible that Ramanujan wrote it at the end of his life in either 1919 or 1920. On the other hand, from a paper that Hardy published in 1915 (Hardy, Quart. J. Math. (Oxford) 46 (1915) 263–283) on the circle problem, we are aware that by early in his stay in England, Ramanujan had a strong interest in these problems, and so the fragment may emanate from this period. Two of the present authors and Kim published a proof of the identity connected with the circle problem in 2013 (Berndt, Kim and Zaharescu, Adv. Math. 236 (2013) 24–59). In this paper, a proof of the second identity is given for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]