To wonder why schools put multiple kids with the same first name in the same class?

[KayEffCee]

DD is year 5 and goes to a primary school with 3 classes per year group.

In her year there are 4 girls with the same christian name. Two of these also have surnames beginning with the same letter, which I'm sure gets confusing at school.

This year, all four girls with the same first name are in the same class! When there are two other classes in their year group, so they could have been spread out a bit more.

AIBU to wonder why schools do this? I remember having 3 Sarahs in my year at primary school and also 3 Emmas and one year all 3 Sarahs and all 3 Emmas were in the same class!

Perhaps schools prioritise things like academic ability, friendships and class dynamics over something as trivial as a name when deciding new classes.

9 Zoe -s on my sister's year. They shared 4 surname initials between them!

I am sure the probably noticed that there are 4 girls with the same first name in your DD's year, but had other variables to make you the class sets against. Does serm a bit daft to the untrained eye though.

At the school where I work we tend to look at other factors before prioritising names. If we end up with two Berts in the same class, we refer to them as Bert A and Bert B, everyone understands fairly quickly.

We had a class with an Eleanor, a Helena, and Ellie, and Ella, and an Eleece!
They could have mixed them up a bit (three forms)

What Izzy said. It really isn't a big deal.

At my school I was one of three Sarahs in my class. We were Sarah A, Sarah K etc. I don't ever remember any confusion.

It slightly annoys me that dds teacher calls pupils with the same name as another in the class by their surname only. Luckily dd doesn't mind as her dad told her all the boys were called just by their surnames when he was at school and she was happy to follow his tradition. But it is a bit weird to me.

If parents weren't actually following fad for names, it would be easier...
But yeah, the school has other concern than checking redundant names...

Be a bit hard if there could only be one of a name in the class.

I was one of five.

Because in the grand scheme of things it isbt actually a problem. There are three Rileys in my DDs preschool class and if a bunch of 3yos can easily distinguish between them, im sure a teacher has no trouble.

I'm not saying there should only be one of each name in a class but it just seems IMO a bit confusing to put loads with the same name in the same class.

OfaFrenchMind, the girls don't have a faddy name, it's just a classic name.

As someone who has had at least one but usually 2 or 3 or more others sharing my name in every school or workplace, I am pleased to let you know that it is no big deal, can actually be fun, and there are far more important things to worry about.

YABU

It's obviously not a problem but I do find it odd when there are none with that name in the other classes. I think there are 4 doubles in DDs class and I do wonder why they didn't take that into account when splitting the intake between the three classes in reception.

Maybe pick more distinctive names?

Why add the "no comment" biscuit icon when you've made a long comment...?

You should try a single sex Catholic school. With the penchant for biblical names, I met a class with 7 Steven/Stephens and 5 Marks, once.

I'd imagine they split the classes based on something more important than names.

^ this

At the school where I used to teach it was done on purpose to make everyone able to distinguish between the children.

Beats me. Although I suppose they're maybe just ignoring it as a relatively trivial issue.

In my secondary school, there was one other girl in my year with my name, and she was in my form class (5 form classes per year). The way my school did it, form classes were together for everything until gcse teaching started. It always bugged me having to be Shadow F all the time when there were only 2 Shadow's in the entire year. Nothing to do with friendship groups either, as none of my friends from primary were put in my form class.

As others have said, there are a whole lot of variables the school will work through to try to ensure fairly even classes, names will come way down that list.

I once had a year 8 class with 4 Tons, 4 Wills, 2 Louis, 2 Max and 2 Joshua. Carnage trying to get their names right. I knew the difference between each student but would occasionally address them by the wrong name. :(

I'm a teacher. I've spent more than 90 mins of precious meeting/preparation time this week alone trying to organise the classes for next year and we still haven't cracked it yet. There are so many variables to take into account like friendship groups, behaviour, ESL, SEN, AEN, academic ability, ethic mix, crazy parents etc etc etc. Children's names aren't even on my list for things to consider.

At my secondary school there were two girls with exactly the same name in one class.

One had first and middle names hyphenated, but all three names were the same.

As in Joan-Louise Smith and Joan Louise Smith.

Fucking nuts.

My DS year is 2 classes. There's 2 of him in his class both with the foreign spelling of their fairly common name and another boy with the shortened version.
I couldn't give a toss about the names but the boy who shares ds' is a bully so for that reason - I wish they'd seperated them.

I have a name that was VERY popular when I was born - there were 7 of us with the same name in my class right through Junior School..! It caused a few mix-ups, but I can't remember any major problems