Girls being used to manage the behaviour of boys in DD's secondary school

[pastaandpesto]

DD(12) has just started Y8. She's told me that in all-but-two of her classes, the seating plan alternates boys and girls i.e. every girl is sitting between two boys.

DD is very quiet and compliant in class, and she laughingly said that all the teachers seem to have put the known troublemakers either side of her to keep them quiet.

Outwardly I laughed along with her, but inside I am bloody furious. DD had a truly shit time with MH this time last year and spending time in the company of her friends is one of the biggest positives about going to to school. She and her friends could be trusted to work alongside each other in class, but they are being denied the opportunity because they have been unwittingly assigned as support humans for male children.

And before anyone says it, I am almost certain that this arrangement is due to the perceived need to sperate the boys from other boys, not to separate the girls from other girls. I have other children (boys) at the school and they all confirm that the vast majority of disruptive behaviour is from boys.

I'm not sure whether to challenge the school on this. I do sympathise with the teachers, classroom management must be a fucking nightmare frankly. But I'm really unhappy about the message this is sending to our girls.

This was me in infant and junior school. I was the girl put next to the rowdiest lout to keep him calm. My mum sent me to an all girls secondary. Poof...problem disappeared and I sat with lovely friends. Can even remember who he was aged 4. Bloody awful kid.

"And before anyone says it, I am almost certain that this arrangement is due to the perceived need to sperate the boys from other boys"

This is a bit sexist to be honest. Girls can just as easily chat to other girls, a d can be equally disruptive.

In any case these types of seating plans are used as an interim measure until the teacher knows the individuals and dynamics in the class better at which point it will often be changed.

I often seat students next to people they don’t usually socialise with. That way they’re more likely to discuss the topic in hand when it comes to work and less likely to get distracted. Break and lunch times are for spending time with friends. Your DD might work well with her best friends but that is not always the case. Seating plans, as pp suggested, are a good way to manage the class whilst you get to know them properly and are often changed.

In addition to this, I have classes where boys are largely the issue behaviourally and classes where girls are predominantly the ones causing disruption.

It’s very common. My dd asked one of her teachers if she could move - teacher agreed. It’s worth a try.

Having attended a mixed sex school I can confirm that girls can be just as disruptive as boys in the classroom.

Girls are not some sort of angelic subsection of humans as seems to be purported on MN!

My mum went to a single sex school and had a horrific time; she was bullied terribly. I was also bullied but the worst of that came from the girls. Girls can be really horrible, just as much as boys can.

Ime splitting both girls and boys up can be very conducive to mitigating the worst of both groups' behaviour. Along with splitting up friends who are more likely to muck about and chat.

In many of the classes I teach, the girls are worse than the boys.

I can only sympathise with your DD, OP. That was me throughout school too. We all know girls can be disruptive etc and there's bullying in single sex schools, but it is not a myth that the decent girls are used as buffers in seating plans this way.

"but it is not a myth that the decent girls are used as buffers in seating plans this way"

Substitute decent girls for decent pupils. Sensible boys can also sometimes be sat next to disruptive pupils to deprive them of an audience/ so done to talk too.

Don't challenge the school (yet). Talk to them. Talk about dd's experience with this child as a seatmate. Ask what the thinking was behind this pairing. There may be a good reason.

If dd's education is suffering due to who she is sitting next to, she should be moved.

Sorry but as a teacher this is the type of post that utterly infuriates me. With my new intake, I spent a good chunk of time setting out a seating plan which takes into account the information available for each child (ASN, comments from primary etc). Add to this mix the inevitable "x must be kept away from y who must be kept away from z" within 2 days of them arriving in school means that there is often limited flexibility in plans.

Do I separate the class out boy/girl? To an extent, yes. Do I do so to use "good girls" to moderate the behaviour of "bad boys"? Not deliberately - but as previous posters have said, I'd be just as likely to use "good boys" to split "bad girls".

The vast majority of my colleagues spend time and energy trying to get this right; it's so demoralising to read this sort of post 2 days into term criticising us when quite frankly, the seating position could be alphabetical as much as anything else. Please don't assume you know better than the teacher or that the teacher is automatically wrong or lazy - they are probably dealing with a set of complex variables that you know nothing about, particularly in the current climate where young people are displaying significant levels of need in the classroom.

My dd and I have both been the calming influence for disruptive boys. Its a crap policy and makes school life horrible for the quiet children.

We had teachers that did those seating plans in the late 70s and early 80s. I was sat next to a boy called John, we became friends and sat next to each other voluntarily until end of 6th form. Unfortunately we lost contact after he went to university.

I was the girl used as a buffer all through secondary school and it made me an anxious wreck. I was quiet and very scared of being trouble, I had massive anxiety around looking stupid/getting things wrong/being made fun of etc and when you put a girl like me next to extroverts who don't want to be near me they want to be near their friends, well you can imagine what it was like every day in each class. Especially as each lesson involved 2 classes being mixed together and they varied each time. So each lesson I had a different group of people not happy they were separated from their friends and stuck with me. It didn't help my self esteem one bit growing up.

But if it works, a calmer classroom environment benefits everyone in the class including your daughter. The French teacher sat me next to a boy for similar reasons. We are now married and expecting our first baby.

How would you have liked the teacher to have arranged a seating plan for a class that they've never met before, where they've no idea who the noisy boys or compliant girls are?

Some teachers do boy girl. I do alphabetical because I find it easier to learn their names when their seat order matches the register.

When I get to know the class this will change. It will probably involve sitting nice girls together and noisy boys opposite ends of the room. Same for nice boys and noisy girls.

Give the teachers a bloody chance before you moan about them on the internet, eh?

Dd2 was treated like this too. I remember one of her teachers telling me that she'd seated Dd2 next to a disruptive child as she was a quiet child who got on with her work. In this case it was a girl who she was moved to sit next to. Dd2 wasn't happy as she was moved away from her friends,and I wasn't happy that she was being used like this. However,I pointed out to Dd2 that we often have to deal with people whom we wouldn't chose too,and it'd be good practice for the future. I did say that if her work or concentration started to suffer,I would ask for her to be moved again, but I think she managed to zone the constant dramatics out.

Dd1,who was equally quiet,but far more academic than Dd2,never got moved to sit with anyone disruptive,despite having some of the same teachers. She was,and still is,the highest achieving pupil in the school's history,so maybe they knew this and didn't want to jeopardize her results.

Both girls found it a novelty to get to 6th form college and have no students messing about in their classes.

Ds was seated between two girls in most classes. The girls were notorious for talking in class as much as the boys were for carrying on. This is one that works both ways.

I just told him it is secondary school, it is a quick 50 min period to learn not a social club so just get on with the work and chat in corridors or at break.

Not agreeing with the boys need to be separated, in some cases, yes! Which can also be said the same for girls!

My eldest son (always listens to the teachers and does as he is told, never chatters away) he has always been plonked between the louder, more disruptive kids, who are generally girls. When he was coming home with a blinding headache from the constant rabbiting and fidgeting, I spoke to the teacher and for a while he got sat next to the quieter kids, who happened to be boys!

Of course, both boys and girls can be disruptive but please don't assume it's been done to ONLY separate the boys from the boys!

At this point the students are just names on the register and any data the teachers have re SEND. I have to do a seating plan based on something when I first meet them and often do boy/girl as from experience it works best when you don’t yet know the students. I change it a lot as I get to know them. If a student asked me to move I’d always listen and oblige if it was a sensible reason. It might be your daughter is next to someone naughty on the register and may get placed near them at the beginning of the year. Ask her to have a word with the teacher and explain it seems to be happening in every lesson—I’m sure they’ll move her. If not then email
school and they will send a message to all her teachers. It’s only 1st September try not to think the worst!

This is not the battle to fight at the start of term. Let things play out and the teachers get to know their classes for the year before you start making demands. As for ‘I want my child to sit with her friends’… definitely wouldn’t lead with that, it sounds ridiculous.

I have a son who is always the buffer - and this applies to being sat between disruptive girls as well as boys. 🙄

As a teacher, schools do this to separate both boys and girls from each other. It's certainly not a case that the boys are all terrible and the girls are all angels. If anything, it helps manage girls behaviour as girls are far worse for general chattiness and whispering than boys are.

This happened with my dd in primary throughout, and has happened all through secondary too. She's very quiet, well behaved and studious and the teachers know that, hence they use her to sit next to the 'naughty' kids which are almost always boys, to keep them away from other boys. I had it out with her year 6 teacher in primary and she was moved, eventually, from sitting near a very disruptive boy. Since then it's been much harder to be involved as secondary runs differently with little parent/teacher contact, and it's had a negative effect on her learning all throughout. Luckily she's still doing well and is forecast good results next year, but it's infuriating op, so I know where you are coming from.

This was definitely the case when my two DDs were at secondary, both quiet lovely girls and both traumatised by having to sit next to disruptive lazy boys - sorry to parents of boys I know they are not all like that but these were the "naughty kids" and the teachers actually told my DDs this was a deliberate strategy to improve behaviour. It did nothing at all for my DDs and I think was actually detrimental to them. Tbh I wish I had made more of a fuss about it at the time.

@Gilm0reGirl that was my two DDs exactly and I am convinced it did not help either of them in terms of mental health