My son is due to start reception in September. It's a large school with a 3 class intake per year. We got class lists through this week and I was surprised to see that there girls with the same name have been put in the same class rather than spread between the three. They are the only three girls in the year with that name and the name is relatively common around here, but not overly so (for what difference that makes). For the purposes of this post, let's say they are called Sophie. Aside from not making it easy for the class teacher of that class, I think it's quite unfair on the girls, especially as in this school, unlike some others I've heard about, the classes stay unchanged throughout the primary school and so these children will be together until age 11 at least.
I can't help think that it's inevitable that the girls will become known as Sophie P / Sophie E etc according to their surnames and may even be more likely to attract unkind nicknames as they get older e.g. 'Big' Sophie, 'Fat' Sophie etc.
I realise it's not always possible to avoid having more than one child with the same first name in a class and I know various factors are taken into account when setting class groups but I can't help think that in a school with three class entry this could have easily been avoided? I would be a bit irritated if I was one of their parents. I have a younger child who will go to the school too in due course and am tempted to feed back to the school politely that I don't think this approach is helpful. What do you think?
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3 children with the same name reception class - would you be annoyed?
Twozealotmorethan1 · 12/07/2017 21:24
As it isn't even one of your children I think you'd be seen as a busy body with too much time on their hands tbh.
There were 2 other girls with my name at school, same class through primary. It wasn't a common name, it just worked out that way.
The strange thing was that the context of conversations always made it apparent which one of us was being referred to.
I think you'll have enough to worry about with your own child starting school and deciding what is important to inform school about and what will make you look like "that parent"
We've all been there OP, it isn't a dig. 
Teachers spent hours painstakingly trying to allocate children into classes that will match all manner of educational , social & psychological needs.
Do they? My DS is about to start at one if the (apparently) top 3 primaries in England and we were told the two classes were decided by taking the oldest and then the youngest off the lists until it was an equal split. I'm assuming they know what they're up to but perhaps not as tgatvexetcuse,must have taken all of 10 minutes 
Anyway, OP - definitely feed back and let us know the response
Are parents and carers no longer allowed to give feedback on school policies?
Of course you can and there are ways to do that for every school.
Whether you should be calling up based on the names of children in the class is the real question.
Gobbolinothewitchscat
That will be to get the age spread across the groups. It probably will give you a rough group list to start with (they have to start somewhere and that would probably be the quickest to get X number of classes).
Then if they're lucky all the other target groups will be evenly spaced. If they're not then some moving around will happen.
By the time they get to secondary class lists are a nightmare some years trying to allocate TA support, sets for each subject matching up on the timetable, keeping known players apart, getting even gender split, not having a 'sink' group or group that could go that way. Then try to get each group to the most appropriate teacher. And still we get complaints over the tiniest things. I don't envy the timetabler
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