'Well-behaved' girls 'socialising' 'challenging' boys at primary school

This happened to me. And last year it happened to DD1. It resulted in the disruptive boy distracting her and kicking her chair etc.

If it happens even once this year, I’ll be straight on the phone to school. My daughters education is my priority, not her placating a child who doesn’t want to learn. I couldn’t articulate why it annoyed me so much, but this thread has helped. Yes sometimes it happens to boys too, but in my experience it is nearly always girls.

THis happened to my second child throughout primary. It depends on how she feels about the situation. If she finds it stressful and too disruptive she should be moved. If she gets on well with the boy and he brings her positives (laughter, confidence, entertainment, lightheartedness), then it’s an equal swap.

Oh, I forgot the positive example - at his previous school, DS1 had been the youngest, and he ended up paired with the biggest kid in the year, who was fairly rambunctious (but lovely) - DS1 isn't like that, but he's good at enforcing boundaries, and genuinely likes being around people, so the two of them got on very well - with DS1 moderating the extremes of the boy's behaviour in a kind and friendly way, and the boy having DS1's back when DS1 was finding things a bit much because he was so young.

Happened all the time at school (plus of course, lining up boy/girl/boy/girl)

I think that yes, if done thoughtfully it can work, but the trouble is that if it's not done well, then the results can be awful - and not just for the 'sensible' one of the pair - DS1's confidence and happiness was taken to rock bottom when he was paired with another pupil because he talked too much, and had bad hand writing - the teacher and pupil together tag-team brow-beat him until he was an absolute shadow of his previous engaged and confident self (he bounced back after I had him moved)

This happened to me at school and both my son and my daughter (well behaved and conscientious) have usually had difficult children put next to them.

I tell them to ignore and not engage with any disruptive behaviour. They are in no way responsible for the other person’s work or behaviour.

I can live with them being placed next to my kids (they have to sit somewhere) but I’d be furious if any teacher ever told them that the misbehaving child was “their responsibility”.

It not just about behaviour either. The idea promoted for years has been that mixed ability sets bring the general standard up, because the brighter ones help the ones who aren't so good up.

This is about using the brighter kids to teach the class whilst the teacher was there for crowd control. The result is the smarter kids suffer because they are distracted from their work and aren't ever stretched because their additional time is used on other kids and the teacher is too busy to actually teach.

I've always been of the opinion that it's just a way to avoid paying for the teachers that are needed to give difficult kids the appropriate teacher pupil ratio.

My personal experience was a seated with a girl with disabilities and expected to some of her work and assist her when she was struggling. She took the piss and said she couldn't do things in my class which she managed just fine in other classes by herself.

I complained to the teacher and was told I was bullying this girl by refusing to do what she told me because she was disabled! My parents ended up getting involved but I suffered because a group of this girls friends (who weren't in the class) took it upon themselves to get involved and sided with the teacher and this girl.

I lost a lot of confidence as a result. Being assertive didn't work out well for me.

Clearly there are lots of cases where this is not a good idea and it's the result of lazy teaching but in some cases it can work. DD1 is very bright and motivated, she's also confident and popular and is a self identifying tomboy (i.e. she's sporty) so gets on well with all the boys. There have definitely been times when they do mixed group work where she's been put with 'naughty' boys to focus them a bit more but I think it's better she's the child that is used rather than a quieter one. We're at a good school though and they do a lot of differentiated teaching as well so I'm not concerned about her being held back. If they were to use DD2 in the same way (she's quieter and less confident) I'd be much more of a tiger mum about it.

I’m 43 and I distinctly remember this happening to me in the second year of juniors. We actually got on very well! To be fair I think it did work for him, and I just got on with stuff as usual.

However from the age of 11 I attended single sex schools - it might have been more disruptive later on

I got sat next to the naughtiest boy in the school. I still know him, and his own son is in a PRU - where he should have been himself.

I wasn't the best behaved girl in the class. I was well behaved but I was LOUD and could be quite aggressive when I got angry. I regularly lost my temper and beat him (for an 8 year old) quite severely.

It's not the way to do it. It's damaging bother for the carer child and the caree. I used to feel bad after hitting this boy when he pissed me off but he was SO ANNOYING and nothing was done. Hitting him seemed to make him leave me alone for a few minutes. He had his revenge in year six - he focused for a whole 30 minutes and spent his lunch break gathering insects in a sandwich bag, then when we were in the queue to go in, he tipped the lost down the back of my dress!

Bizarrely he is now both huge and very pleased to see me whenever we meet.

Is it just about girls though. My well behaved son is always sat next to and paired with more boisterous children. Sometimes it doesn’t bother him and sometimes it has so I have mentioned issues if there are any. I think it’s generally a tactic to help less well behaved children behave. Not girls helping boys as such

Surprised you are surprised. It's been going on for years. Particularly utilising girls in this way.

Happens with boys too:
I complained to ds2's teacher after a number of instances, that I basically said that I simply refused to have ds2 sitting next to that boy anymore.

In a secondary school that I worked in, a young man with a lot of problems (learning issues, very difficult family life, challenging behaviour, prone to violent outbursts and exclusions) started going out with a girl who the senior managment team deemed to be a good influence. As soon as management became aware of it they utterly exploited that girl to the extent that when the lad was kicking off, they would go and take the girl out of her lesson to go and calm him down. At one point, when she'd had enough and wanted to split up, they organised mediation meetings in school to help them work out their problems and stay together. Basically encouraging her to stay in a relationship that was damaging to her.
Fucking awful behaviour. I complained a lot, which achieved nothing, and left the school as soon as I could.

Meant to say that this is probably why it is said that girls do best at girls schools and boys do best at mixed!

Im in my 30s and this happened to me! And when I protested not being able to sit next to my friend my teacher said that was racist. Bitch. Particuarly as she was the one acting on her internalised misogyny at the time.

We had this problem at my older DDs primary school.

In her class, the best behaved children were all hard working, studious polite girls. In the class there were a number of disruptive boys ( kicking cats, throwing snowballs with stones in, hacking into other children's IT passwords etc).

Both in class and particularly on school trips the more mature girls were not allowed to sit with their friends on the coach etc. They were paired with a more challenging boy to police him for the day. In the end my DD started to say she didn't want to go on school trips as she didn't want to look after X boy, but she had to because it was her job.

I was shocked as I hadn't realised the extent of the policy and said that it most certainly was not her responsibility in school (or life) to try and contain badly behaved boys. With encouragement, she and her friends raised the matter with the teachers and the girls were allowed to be paired with their ( well behaved) girlfriend on the next school trip.

I do worry that the pattern had been going on for too long and it laid down a message that badly behaved men are DDs responsibility. Certainly now at Uni she often ends up leading her friends in getting the vomiting male students back to halls and has cleared up their vomit. So perhaps a precedent was set.

Happens to my DD (10) all the time, which is why I'm thinking of sending her to a girls secondary school. On my more charitable days I think about it as widening her social sphere, and she is on good terms with a look of the 'naughty' boys but it does piss her (and me) off.

It's not a new phenomenon. I'm 32 and in my last year of primary school I was put next to the most badly behaved boy in the school year. I remember doing all of the work when we had to work in pairs. I imagine that's very common.

Yes it does happen, the 'naughty boy' in my DD year 6 class was put on her table as they were all well behaved.

He said some truly awful things to her, sabotaged her work and she often cried over him.

I went into school and the teacher said she'd 'sort' it. Her way of sorting it meant moving my daughter off the table so she thought she'd done something wrong, and the boy just picked on the next kid and made her school day hell to!

DS1 teacher told me that they place certain children next to him for this exact reason, although I can’t remember how they phrased it.

On the flip side, that probably means my ds2 who is easily distracted, is more likely to be sat with a more focused group who will ignore him.

I’m a teacher and mixed-ability (and mixed-behaviour) pairings are very common. Thinking about my class now and gender isn’t really a factor though. I have some well behaved boys sat next to more challenging girls. The important thing is to move children around over the year so no one child is left in a challenging pairing for too long. And obviously if they’re having to put up with unacceptable behaviour you step in. I’ll be thinking about this across the year though!

This never happened to me because at my school we had separate desks from age 8, and I am so, so grateful for that. It was also before the fad for constant "group work" came in. There is no good evidence that group work is a good way of teaching/learning (except in small doses) and plenty of evidence to suggest that it is not.

Sitting children around tables so that some of them inevitably have their backs facing the teacher has never been shown to be good practice, and in high-performing countries like Finland it is not done. It is a recipe for facilitating disruption and bullying, and it is shocking IMO that teachers in primary schools are being forced to do this even when they don't want to.

This has happened to both me and my friend around 15 years ago at school. We always giggle at how it made my friend's behaviour worse and not the boy's better 😂 I personally hated it. I felt intimidated by the bad behaviour, worried it reflected badly on me & just basically spent lessons willing the kid to shut up. Another one I was placed with just persistently used to copy my work, which then got my marks lowered when the teacher realised. I remember my Dad going off on one at the teacher saying it's not my responsibility as a 12 year old to tell this kid to f* off. I did try and was always so upset when he'd take my book but I can see my dad was right, why should that have been my worry?

I have to say- it always happened to ds too.
I could always anticipate who they’d put him next to...
I’d complain if she feels strongly.

This happened to me 20 years ago and I’m still annoyed about it. My first experience of exams was an absolute joke. Half a class of top set girls put in with bottom set, disruptive and antisocial boys. We were all nervously excited for our exams and had prepared carefully. The buffoons talked, threw things and generally disrupted everything. The message was clear that our education was less important than our role in placating this bunch of primitive males.

Oh god, now I realise why I was always sat with the good boys at school, I thought they asked for me there. This had been done for years and years and it is a good way of calming a classroom if children are mixed up that way, surely.