to wonder why a school would ask children who they want in their class, if they have no intention of honouring it?

[AChickenCalledKorma]

DD1 going to a secondary that prides itself on having a highly-developed transition system to ease Yr6 children into their new school.

Last term they were asked to identify two children they would like in their tutor group. DD1 has a friend who is currently abroad but returning home in time to start secondary, so she rather thoughtfully put her name down. Friend's mum has also been in touch with school who undertook to put the two girls together in order to help with transition.

Received a letter today confirming tutor groups. Not only are they not together, but DD1 is not with either of the people she wrote down and is with her least favourite person from her current school. Meanwhile other children are with all their best friends.

I know she will be fine. I know it's a fresh start and it doesn't really matter. I know they will all see each other at break. But honestly, why raise expectations. That's rubbish transition planning. Isn't it? Or am I missing something.

It's a shame not to have a friend to start with but friendship groups change at secondary school.

DD put four names on her list. One of the girls caused a huge amount of trouble during the last term in year 6 so I asked her new school not to put them together which they thankfully didn't. She was put with another girl on her list and they barely speak now as they have different friends.

Well, is it children they 'would like' to be with, i.e. a suggestion, or an actual statement of intent? It must be difficult to accommodate 100s of these.

This happened to DS1. Ended up in the same tutor as the child that had been low level bullying him since Reception.

Saying that he soon made other friends and he only saw the child at Tutor but I was a bit horrified.

Sometimes a fresh start is good.
Try this:
y5 residential which I stupidly talked DS into attending. He put down 2 names he wanted to share rooms with. Turns out one of the boys wasn't part of his group & other one didn't put down DS name so DS lumped in with some other boys he didn't know.

He refused to cooperate and came home within an hour. Me out of pocket £90. I now know to always tell DC that the school can't be trusted. :(.

Not sure how the school could be expected to accommodate that, lljkk?

I feel if they can't accomodate it, don't ask, just make your groups on ability, timetables etc.

I agree completely.

That's it Jenny70 - they have sent a letter that makes great play of how carefully they plan the classes based on all sorts of different criteria, that they put a lot of effort into it in close consultation with primary schools etc etc etc.

Which is all totally fine. But why on earth did they (a) ask the kids for preferences and (b) tell the other mum that they would put our daughters together, if they weren't actually going to do either of those things. I now have a child who was looking forward to secondary, but is now full of resentment before she's even started.

I really do know that it will all be fine in the end, but wish we weren't in this position at this point. I have sent a very polite email enquiring whether there might possibly have been an oversight but acknowledging that it's all very complicated ...

Does your DD have quite a common name? Or is it possible there is more than one Jane Smith, say, in the year? Because a friend had the same problem and it turned out they'd mixed up the Jane Smiths.

Hmmm - at risk of outing myself, yes we have about as common a name as you can get! Am feeling better about the email now, just in case there really has been a mistake.