"They've made two girls unhappy to make one boy happier."

Doesn't it work both ways? It's not a boy/girl thing.
I have a well behaved boy who struggles with focus sometimes and that's taken into acct when he's paired each week. Sometimes it's a boy sometimes a girl but usually not one of his 'friends' as he's too chatty with friends.
He's also been paired at times with the more disruptive kids, as he's calm and biddable. He's been paired with kids weaker at maths than him, as he's the 'swot' at maths. He's had the 'swotty' girl for English as that helps him focus on English which he's ok at but finds dull.
He's been asked to be in a friend grp with a kid who has SEN issues and finds it hard to join in playground games or be social.
He doesn't always like who he's with or understand why but as it changes frequently he's not stuck in the same situ for long, and if anything it's teaching him tolerance for others.

Ah that sounds really hard Brandaris. No way would I have put you back with him if you were in my class
Ideally we would just put a disruptive student at a desk on their own. That would usually require bigger classrooms/smaller classes so it's not going to happen in schools without a shed load of money.

Rainuntilseptember that’s the thing, I couldn’t complain about it as it would just make him laugh and he would just think of something worse for next time. I was also very sheltered so didn’t really understand what it was or what it was called so I couldn’t have really complained. He obviously didn’t do it while the teacher could see.

Yes that probably is a bit at the extreme, but that was the worst point after years and years of various pupils distracting me and getting away with low level bullying because they focused their energy on annoying me rather than the whole class. They did seem quieter next to me, but they weren’t actually better behaved. They also took it out on me outside of the classroom.

My DD has had this too. What usually happened was they'd disrupt DD so much she would get in trouble and I'd get called in about DD failing to pay attention in class (not acting up, but not doing tasks fully as instructed). I ended up reminding the school that given DD is hearing impaired that perhaps sitting her next to the disruptive pupils as she can be a good influence wasn't working as the disruptive ones were stopping her being able to hear properly. Unfortunately due to her hearing DD is also loud so she's not best sat next to sensitive pupils of those who will use her loudness as a cover for their misbehaviour - the second has happened a couple of times caught by Teacher or TA.

Sorry, where does it say specifically that OP's DD is the more able child? She could well be, but OP hasn't said this. And where does it mention that the boy has been disruptive? It sounds as though he and his partner didn't get along, so the teacher split them up. Someone was always going to be put out by this. I'm always intrigued by the way in which some posters add in their own details.

But I do agree in general that girls are too often used as a buffer for the poor/substandard behaviour of other pupils, usually boys. My DS has ADHD (still undergoing diagnosis) and is very inattentive and disorganised. He tries really hard to focus and to be tidy, but his brain has other ideas. His primary school teachers would place him with girls on either side and encourage them to help him organise his things. It was very unfair and demeaning for the girls to be given that responsibility. It was also frustrating for DS to have his stuff lifted and put away constantly (there were tears!), but worst of all, it was teaching him that it was the job of girls to organise boys. Terrible message.

That used to happen to me all the time. They thought my good behaviour would rub off on them, which is not how it works- they just used to wind me up for an hour.

Having been the “good pupil” who was sat with disruptive kids in order to moderate their behaviour, I found it bloody awful and it resulted in me refusing to go to school. If I had been asked to help a nice but struggling girl, it would have been okay. Being sat with three rough, disruptive boys was daily misery.

God, this happened throughout school.

I will always remember Aaron Davis. Exact same scenario, I was sat next to him in year four because he was disruptive and I never complained.

One afternoon, he once slapped me round the face with a wooden ruler. I remember Mrs bitch Reynolds looking me dead in the eye and then pretending she hadn't noticed. I didn't say a word and cried the rest of the afternoon, never once did she reprimand him or ask if I was alright.

My Dad picked me up from school with this fuck off red welt on my cheek and frog marched me back in. I never sat with Aaron Davis after that.

Nice little girls are taught to placate naughty boys from when they are old enough to talk and they get called 'bossy' or 'rude' if they ever complain. I'm so sick of a lifetime of it.

The fact it's 2020 and still going on is maddening.

I was also the bright child who was sometimes sat next to the low achievers. It’s such total crap that the more able child gets anything out of it. I had the kind of personality where I was impatient and dismissive of the less able child. I received no help to improve these aspects of my personality or my behaviour - we were just left to it. I was good at self protecting (thanks to a tough mother) but I look back and think I must have harmed other children’s self esteem in the process.

The ONLY way this works is if there are students who are trained to mentor properly. Just imagining that it will all just happen is actually dismissive of teaching as a profession. Is an 8/9/10 year old really going to be able to support and guide the less able child with behaviour problems with no guidance about how? Teaching - and mentoring - is a nuanced and complex skill in which no child is an expert.

Much better to isolate on a separate table the misbehaving pupils, sitting them singly, and then concentrate TA support on the lower ability tables. Then raise confidence by ensuring lower ability tables regularly answer questions that they have prepared answers for, and getting them to lead bits of the class that you know they will flourish in. Alternatively, regularly change where people sit so no one suffers. It also means particular dynamics won’t be ingrained between certain pupils, which helps counter the self-adoption of a learning identity (ie the joker, the disruptor, the lazy one etc) as they can’t as easily form that binary relationship (“I’ll sit back and do nothing while you do all the work”) if they keep on sitting with different pupils with their own ways of learning and treating others.

How does one know the boy is ''happy''?

There's a big difference between "that boy chats non-stop with his mates but will be quiet next to Lucy" and "I'll ignore that boy watching porn on his phone next to Lucy".
I'd make a student put their phone away but I also would have no idea what was on the phone unless someone told me, or I'd walked up right behind them. That's disgusting behaviour and he would have the phone confiscated and his parent called if he were in my class.

I was another more able pupil, throughout school I was paired with disruptive boys or girls. At secondary I was paired with a horrible nasty bully of a boy in sciences. He would sneak his phone in and play porn clips, not for himself, just to watch my discomfort and embarrassment.

These pairings just made it harder for me to concentrate and learn so I missed important information, and like fuck was I going to help the person next to me who couldn’t be arsed to actually listen or work anything out themselves and thought they could just copy my work. Why should my hard work, made harder by their twatting about be of benefit to them when they were essentially teacher-sanctioned bullying me?

Using quieter children, whether boys or girls, to save the teachers from having to actually deal with poor behaviour is such bad practice.

But wrt your op, girls have always been the ones to get the shittier deal in pretty much every aspect of life and are conditioned to accept this. So it’s great your daughter is recognising and questioning it. She’s right, two girls shouldn’t be made unhappy just for the happiness of one boy.

The other factor is often the good child will have been badly treated by the misbehaving child. It doesn't make us very sympathetic to their academic struggles. Pairing a bright child and a nice but struggling one wouldn't be so bad.

@Persipan, yep exactly what ds1 has always done. With him also moaning how much of a pain it was because he was doing all the work on his own.

Your DD learning would be much more disrupted if there wasn’t a seating plan and everyone sat next to a friend- equally they would spend for ever after each break trying to work out where to sit, and the shy quiet child would stand there not knowing where to sit and would look embarrassed and sad.

I’ve grown up in a country where sitting plans are never used. What you describe has never happened.
The few times when things were more strained WAS when we were told to sit in specific groups (for whatever reason).

I did that too. And for the teachers above, what I learned from this was that I should never ever ask for help with anything. I was the one doing the helping so I shouldn't need it.

Even now, I feel shame around asking for help with anything at all and it has held me back.

I would sometimes do this when I was teaching. The theory behind it is it helps both the more able child - in this case you daughter - and the weaker student

I was the more able child in this scenario. I used to just do the work myself for whoever they'd lumped me with, so I wouldn't have to be bothered with them slowing me down. Which they probably did find helpful but I'm sure wasn't quite what the teacher intended.

I totally agree this happens, but as a teacher we have very few things we can actually do to minimise poor behaviour (I know behaviour wasn't the issue in the OP, but when we do new seating plans that's usually why) We are basically controlling with smoke and mirrors and don't always get a positive reception from home when we pass on the problems. Shuffling people around works and there's little else we can do. I wouldn't use the same child in the same way in two plans, but obviously I don't know what happens elsewhere in the school.

Oh and I’ve just remembered (because this sitting next to disruptive kids thing happened to me a lot)! I was sitting next to a another badly behaved boy the day of some important exam (maybe year 6 sats? I don’t remember). It was multiple choice and he dared me to colour in random choices, like he was about to. And - for some idiotic reason - I did.

I obviously didn’t do well in that test and my parents kicked off at me (strict family). It had no baring on my life or secondary school overall, so maybe it wasn’t sats, but I don’t think the practice of sitting “good” kids next to badly behaved kids necessarily works!

totally agree that using girls in the way described in many of these posts is horrid and yes

And what about using boys to buffer loud/disruptive/less able girls?

Oh and I should add - totally agree that using girls in the way described in many of these posts is horrid and yes, it's an example of girls having to get on with things while boys are pandered to and accommodated.

The concept of pairing/grouping more able with less able students is down to the idea that explaining/teaching is a good way to cement your own knowledge and understanding of something. It's a popular trend among teaching and 'mastery' in education at the moment. Not entirely sure I buy into it (I think it depends massively on the subject and the kids in a particular class) but anyway, I think the problem comes more when brighter or better behaved children are paired with disruptive or difficult children. This is a totally different situation (though of course it may often overlap).

I am very careful in my classes not to use the 'good girls' to dilute or babysit the 'naughty boys'. If that means I end up with a group of more difficult kids seated near each other, so be it. I refuse to have kids who are trying to get on with things and work together well brought down by those who won't cooperate. But like I said, that's behaviour rather than ability. I do sometimes put kids of very different abilities together.

Dd3 is always sat next to the naughty boy in class because she’s good. I had the same thing all through primary and it annoyed me because I never got to sit with my friends. During my 11+ I had to sit opposite the nastiest boy in class. We both had long legs and he kicked me throughout the maths exam! My mum was furious because my legs were blue with bruises.

He’s been in prison for years for armed robbery and none of us are surprised.