Primary child sat only with non-English speaking children

I‘m very wrong about what?

You are very wrong. This is a website for giving advice, not coming and arguing with other posters. Calm down woman and take care of your own feelings.

OP‘s daughter has expressed concerns, yet you think you know better how she should feel?

I think this a classic case of ignoring the needs of a compliant, well behaved student who will tow the line. I think the teacher's actions show poor judgment.

Well aren’t you the perfect teacher. Just because this happens in your school doesn’t mean it’s the same for the OP’s class.

It absolutely does happen and is a huge bugbear because in the primary years it is almost always girls who are negatively impacted while boys experience the positive influence. Yet another life scenario where girls needs are second to those of the boys.
I am always shocked that teachers (more often female than male!!) don't see the utterly ingrained sexism of it.
Girls doing better than boys? Better do sonething about that eh 🙄

Exactly this.

Your attitude is so depressing.

And some of those reasons are probably for the benefit of the class 'as a whole', or for the benefit of the teacher, even if they are to the detriment of one child in isolation.
As parents we aren't here to advocate the whole class dynamic we want to make sure our own child isn't negatively affected.
Eg the practise of sitting quiet well behaved children next to poorly behaved, noisy ones. Im sure it improves the overall class because maybe those poorly behaved kids do slightly better as a result, but it absolutely negatively impacts the learning of those quiet well behaved kids. They are constantly used to moderate the behaviour of others and its unacceptable!

I'd tell your daughter to give it a go for a couple of weeks and if she's finding it difficult then speak to the teacher.

I often pair EAL pupils together (secondary school) so they can practice English together, but not when they speak the same language as I find they just chat too much in their own language and often without relevance to the lesson.

A parents job is to advocate for their child, do what’s best for their child.

If OP feels that her child is not in best situation, then she should be expected to try to improve the situation.

OP child doesn’t have a “ job” , she is not supposed to spend her education hours educating someone else.

She can be at her table, doing her work. Doesn’t need to be chatting with anyone. Any group projects … based on table, would be shambles if no common language. She shouldn’t feel obligated to do more.

ESL … the school should be running parallel lessons during literacy, with educators who know what they’re doing.

Maybe parents who are interested can organize reading or language based activities within the school. If this kind of volunteerism would be helpful.

What do you think was the reason you felt lonely and isolated?
No one stops the kids forming friendships in school
and yes, many schools do not put friends to sit together so they don't chat too much

No, not acceptable. Speak up for her, don't wait. Coming to think of it, the only advantage of a minor private school for my dc I can name is that there was not one ESL pupil there, everyone was on the same page linguistically.

And actually, it is a crying shame that primary school native speakers are supposed 'to help' ESL pupils - I say so because watch these ESL pupils in senior years taking advantage over native speakers in written exams by requesting up to 1 hour (or is it 30 minutes) extra because 'English is not my native language'.

My DS has been in both situations. He began school at 5 in another country where he didn’t speak the language and in a class where no one spoke English. The other kids were so kind, patient and friendly to him and he learned to speak the language (imperfectly) very quickly. I was forever grateful to them and their families for how much they welcomed, supported and embraced him. He was quickly invited to birthday parties and to play with classmates. Other parents were friendly to me. It really helped us integrate.

When we returned to UK, at 7 DS was one of only a handful of kids in his class who had a British parent and he was asked to be a class buddy to a boy who didn’t speak any English. Other kids at his table also spoke very little English. In only a few months, they spoke (imperfect) English. My DS’s buddy was really good at Maths and helped DS with this. Remembering how much I’d valued the friendliness shown to us in a new country, I befriended the parents and invited their children to play. I could see how it set their minds at rest, even though, like I’d been, they were initially a little shy to speak English.

I understand your DD feels a little uncomfortable with children she can’t initially talk to much. But it might help to ask her to think how she’d like to be treated if it was her in a new country and unfamiliar school. Would she want the local kids to be moved away from her because they can’t talk to her? Or would she like them to befriend her and keep chatting to her to help her feel welcome and learn?

It shouldn’t hold her back. There’s lots of evidence mixed ability classes/sets are best even for the most able kids because explaining things to less able kids consolidates their own knowledge. And, once her classmates’ English is proficient, which shouldn’t take long, they may end up helping her with certain things.

If she's worried you have to bring it up with them, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a deliberate strategy on the teachers' part.

My DD is very bright, amenable and good at helping people learn. This meant she was used as a free TA by her Y3 teachers, which meant she was always partnered up with the naughty and/or less able children to be a steadying influence and do the teachers job for them - totally deliberate strategy as I found out when I asked them about it because DD was unhappy.

It meant she was never paired up with her friends, so was always watching her friends working together whilst she was stuck either with a disruptive kid who didn't want to be there or a child severely struggling with their academic progress who really could have done with a one on one support. It also hindered her progress because she was expected to help her "learning partner" when she'd finished her work rather than do the stretch tasks other higher ability kids were given.

I made damn sure it didn't happen for the rest of her time at that school and that she had the same opportunity to work with her friends as everyone else did.

I think adults forget how differently time passes for children. This child has only lived for one quarter of the lifetime of a 40 year old. For all the adults saying 'Leave it a few weeks' please bear in mind that 3 weeks to a child feels like two or three months.
Much better to raise the question now with the teacher.

I wasn't attacked or bullied per se and I came out with the best results in my year. However I was sad and isolated and struggled to make friends all through Primary, something that continued to affect me for a long time afterwards.

School is not just about academic results!

It might work out fine. I'd give it 2 or3 weeks before wait with the teacher.

Don't worry in the slightest. Your child is going to be ok. She is not being attacked or bullied and if she loves learning, nothing will stop her

Good that the teacher responded but very alarming that she hadn’t even noticed how sad your child was.

My DD has this too. She got so upset that I spoke to the teacher. She ended up sitting by herself for a while and was so happy!

Nope, not acceptable. It's always the nice quiet compliant girls that are used for these things. Your daughter has told you she's worried, she needs you to advocate for her. Support her and go and see the teacher. Tell her you are doing this otherwise in future she may not come to you for support.

As regards letting teachers just do their job - perhaps that poster should look around at what some teachers (in the uk) are doing to break trust. For starters they tell children that they can change gender, use a different name and then tell the children they don't have to tell their parents. Things like this have broken parent / teacher trust. My job as a parent is to stand up for my child, I appreciate children get the facts wrong and it's important to tread carefully however 'just seeing how it works out' never ends well and is not an option.

OP one of the things I've learnt now being a mum of teens, is that too much concern about being 'that parent' can lead to you not advocating enough for your child when your child needs you.

Obviously there is a balance, and going in guns blazing isn't the way forwards, but your daughter has raised a concern with you, it makes sense she'd be worried (a lot of adults would be in the same situation!) and one of your roles as a parent is to help ease her through these types of things. She's too young yet to do it herself (over time your role will change to supporting her in how to approach issues herself). Don't wait it out until after Halloween because it might change - would you do that yourself if you were really unhappy with where you were being made to sit in the office for some reason? Of course not, you'd talk to your boss.

You may well not have the full story, the teacher could be planning a shift around next week or maybe this is the only option for some reason and your DD will need to suck it up. Whatever it is, a (gentle) conversation with the teacher is a good thing - if she disagrees with you that this is a problem then you can work to understand her reasoning, and ask her for suggestions on how to support your DD's anxiety about this.

This.
Out of all the other noise on this thread THIS is what matters.

Your child has raised it with you.
Your job is to raise it with teaching staff.

Oh WOW

Expected to help manage crappy male behavior as a primary schooler. I hope you told the teacher exactly what you thought of that!!

The misogyny is astounding