How are class teachers decided?

[Geordielass1987]

how is it decided which child goes into which class? Are kids who get on well together put together and kids who dont placed apart? How is it decided?
(I guess if it was done like that they’d be changed every two mins haha)
I have no issue with my child’s teacher or class, I’m just interested in how it all works!

I’ve seen it done different ways since I became a teacher.

At my current school, we mix the cohort every year. Try to make the classes as balanced as possible in terms of Sex/SEND/EAL/Pupil Premium/Inclusion/Tricky parents and make sure everyone has a friend.

How it used to be done when I was a teacher was we discussed each child e.g. child x and then found their nearest equivalent to go in the parallel class so they were as even as possible e.g. if child x was extremely able but struggled with social situations we'd talk about whether there was someone similar for the other class. As much as possible we'd also try and split 'bad' pairings e.g. people who constantly fell out and try to balance boys/girls, SEND etc. We usually got it right as it took a long time to discuss but occasionally we didn't.

In my school we try to keep them together as much as possible. We tend to reclassify at around P4 or P6 if we have to.

I'm currently working on classifying our new intake of P1s coming up from nursery.

We identify high level of needs first and try to match that to the experience of the teacher, e.g. Mrs X is very calm and routine based, usually does v well with children with autism, Miss X is very into outdoor learning and usually gets the best out of the more spirited ones.

Then we look at the boy/girl split and the DOBs of the children. Some schools like an older class and a younger class. We try to have an even mix to bring them all on.

When you're reclassifying an older class you usually start with the high tariff relationships- so Jimmy brings out the worst in Bertie, let's split them up. Then you consider friendships and who you want to keep together. Finally we look at the academics and make sure you have workable groups.

And then at least three parents will phone and complain.

It's a minefield.

everyones points are so interesting! Can I ask about tricky parents? How does that come into it? I wonder if my child’s school think I’m a tricky parent 😂 I really hope not!

If parents complain do they get moved?

No because it opens a can of worms for parents to pick their child's teacher.

We mix now. We try to have a balance of need and a mix of boys and girls. The children are asked to write a given number of their friends and we try to make sure every child has a friend with them. We do of course try to separate the ones that need to be! It is actually quite a long process that we started at Easter.

The parents weren't a factor when I did it and not should they be. It's not about them.

Even mix of boys/girls, even mix of abilities (if known), even share of EAL children, even share of SEN needs...

Friendships taken into account where possible.. if a child has a social workers involved or there are wider issues then where possible a more experienced teacher would have the child in their class as opposed to an ECT..

My Headteacher found it impossible to pay any kind of compliment to any of her teachers.

One day she came and sat next to me in the staff room and stated to chat (also unheard of as she only ever chatted to her favourites, and I want one of them). Then she told me how good I was with parents and what good feedback she had had from them about me over the years. I was stunned. Until she followed it up with "I know your class is at maximum numbers, but we have a new child starting next week who has a particularly difficult parent..."

Ha! So yes, sometimes that's a factor.

It depends on the parent request. If we've made a genuine oversight we'll try to fix it but we spend so long on it we tend to get it right.

Tricky parents can be really time consuming to deal with. You might try and make sure you don't have too many in one class to manage teachers workload.

We are doing our split 'n' mix tomorrow. It takes A LOT of moving and deciding! we are a two form intake, so 60 children.

We write each child's name from each class on a post it note - and add if they are PP/SEND/EHCP/EAL (and any other acronym!!) We also add their SATS data on (I'm in Y2).

We need an even-ish mix of B/G too.

We start with PP/SEND/EHCP (which to be fair are usually the same children) and also usually our lowest 20% in terms of ability.

Then we do our GD children (which this year we only have 4 so it won't take us long 🤦‍♀️)

Once that's done ( the highest and lowest) we will do our 'working towards' children. Then the children who are working within the expected standard.

Once we've sorted out the ability range fairly...we look again and see who will wind who up...and which parent will not like that one, and which class has too many chatty girls so we need to even it up a bit etc. It takes a long time and a lot of post it notes get switched until we feel it's going to work 🤦‍♀️

For some reason I thought it was an automatic thing like just automatically done by a computer system! Teachers have so many things to do!

That's how it's done in secondary school
Except year 7 tutor groups in some schools where they do try and start them with a friend