The teaching team have been hard at work creating draft class lists for next year, and I know some are curious about the process, which follows the Board's Policy requirements.
The aim is to take into account a wide range of factors to ensure we get an optimal balance of key criteria such as gender, ability, learning support needs, language needs and also considers social and emotional factors.
In terms of how we achieve this, the teachers complete a detailed overview for all individuals in the class, which we then use a software algorithm to sort according to the criteria. This helps to flag any separations that the teacher may have recommended, and also includes names of (4) other children from across the year level that each student has suggested they feel they work/learn well with. While we can't place children based on their preferred friends, we do take these names into account and try to make sure they have at least one person from their list.
In addition to teacher recommendations, we also factor in parent comments via the form sent out through Hero to ensure we capture anything we may not be aware of that may be important to note.
Teams meet with school leaders to double (and triple!) check the draft lists against the criteria and make any final adjustments, with current (and future) team leaders subsequently meeting with Senior Leaders to finalise the draft lists. These are then ready to share with the reports in the final week, when parents are notified of the class and teacher for 2025.
If that all sounds relatively complex, I can assure you that it is, and that it is something our team takes seriously.
Naturally, it isn't a perfect science and classes always have a wide range of personalities and learning needs, which is a good thing, but taking this level of time and care is the most effective approach to ensuring we do our level best to achieve the best outcome for all the children as a whole.
As you would expect, next year's teacher receives detailed information about each child (including assessment, reporting and learning goals in addition to any pastoral notes), and is also individually briefed by the previous team members (and our learning support coordinator where applicable).
