Kids having to rank their LEAST favourite classmates?

I've just told you why it was done. Those are exact questions from Dreikurs classroom sociogram. When I was a teacher I always had one of the most harmonious classrooms in my school and I'm certain knowledge I gained from the classroom sociogram helped that. It'd be a shame for you to complain about a decades old well researched and designed assessment and for your complaint to ultimately make the classroom environment less harmonious.

I hope the children don't find out who put them as the least favourites, as it likely won't all be trouble makers that are listed last but also the shy children, anyone that maybe looks different etc.

Horrible idea. I don't care for the first part, but the second is awful.
If they thought it essential to know which DC hadn't formed relationships then a better question would be "Three people you don't usually play with". Any serious tensions where they felt the need to seperate DC should have already been observed without the need to ask.

It's really an invaluable resource and I would hate to see another teacher lose this information because it can be so helpful. I suppose I do feel rather strongly about that because it was so helpful to me and some of my students.

The children were asked which children they least like playing with. Not for a list of children they don't like/hate.

If the teacher is looking at creating work groups then surely s/he needs to know who will work well together and what groupings might create friction. Most teachers would be aware of friction in their class so probably not a subtle way of doing it.

Absolutely awful idea !

I agree with unbeaten. You have to be very careful with kids as you can be suggestive without intending.

I do think the info would be interesting though from perspective of sen parent.
Because both my dc were ok socially in younger primary but then deteriorated. However the primary are generally crap and dont care or notice, the eldest is audhd. But they denied the adhd on questionnaires despite seeing issues.But she wasnt invited to any parties after y3! Anyway dc2 was older around y4. But from teachers you get - they are lovely - great etc. But imo just not bondong at deeper level with most of the kids. I dont thonk dc2 would appear as disliked list but probably just left out in the middle. Dc1 may have been on some girls lists but definoteoy on every promnary teachers list! We had one teacher encourage kids to tell on her after break as she was making a list of dc1 errors!

Sure. I just googled it and the very first thing I found stated that it's highly discouraged in the classroom due to the severe risks to children's mental health. The risks are plainly obvious and massively outweigh any perceived benefit. So yeah, I hope that every teacher loses access to it, because the potential damage to the less popular kids is horrendous. It's like an authorised slam book.

Bullies charter. The kids will discuss it.

What a terrible idea. I can understand asking children to select a handful of friends who they’d like to be with, so everyone has at least one friend in their class (although why they’d do that a few weeks into the new school year is confusing because friendship dynamics will have changed massively by the summer- and probably by next week!)
But asking them who they don’t like is bound to end in tears. They’re definitely going to discuss it and it’s going to lead to some (probably the most vulnerable) children feeling excluded or disliked. Even asking for their best friends is likely to cause drama when some children pick kids who haven’t picked them, or one child in a friendship group of 6 gets left out.

If it’s to select groups then the teacher should have some idea of who is friends with who, who doesn’t get along, and which children don’t work very well together (the child my son would pick is a terrible influence and although they like each other they’d be a total nightmare together).

They are in year 3.
That's not a nuance they will understand.
It's going to be a list of the kids they don't like.

Year 3, the teacher has just inherited the class.
Schools can't put classes together in a 2 class year group based on friendships.

I can imagine the teacher has lots of uses for this information, whos the popular kid, whos the bully, whos just lost there neither popular nor unpopular.

Put groups and teams together based on that.

Definitely email the school and ask for clarification. It sounds exceptionally bad, but children don’t always report accurately. Rather like your OP where the title is says something different from what you actually meant!

It's worrying that it seems like people who should know best how children think are the people who show the least understanding of how children think!

I suppose it's to try to make the teachers aware of any kids who are being left out. If one child appears on nearly everyone's list then that is a situation where the teacher might need to subtly intervene. It could yield some unexpected results where it might have flown under the radar that a kid had no friends. It might also be useful to get the class thinking about friendships, perhaps leading to a conversation about kindness and inclusion. I can think of lots of ways it could be useful if handled well.

Asking children who they do and don't like to play with is a remarkably poor way to select well functioning working groups. The teacher should be looking to form groups that take into account personality types, ability, confidence etc and either grouping with similarity in mind (quieter DC altogether so they are not dominated) or a mix for balance. Life isn't about doing everything with people you like best or who are most fun socially, it's about learning to build relationships with all types of people.

Of course they'll find out. It'll be the talk of the playground once the teacher is out of earshot.

Oh dear this does not bode well, what ever the reasoning.

Do teachers not see with their own eyes who plays with whom anymore? Do the TA's not see it in class and at break times? Do they not put them into mixed up groups for tasks?

Who cares what social study it is; it's disgraceful. The kids will all have been chattering about it, asking their friends who they wrote down. It's so divisive; it just confirms division and alienation.

Young children won't necessarily have the courage or independence of mind to question (or refuse) to do what they are being instructed to do by a teacher. This is just one angle of this that I really dislike. I hope some left the 'dislike' bit blank.

I would speak to the teacher about it, too, OP. It appears that common sense has left that classroom.

I would be furious about this and would lose faith in any teacher who thought this was a good idea. YWNBU at all to email the school and complain.

As a former shy bullied child, I can assure you that the kids who nobody wants to play with already know that nobody wants to play with them. They won't be shocked to hear whispering in the playground. This happens every day anyway. Maybe highlighting the problem is a step towards fixing it.