Seating Plans

Seating plans - the answer to all discipline issues within the classroom.

Or so many senior management say. But do they really work?

The answer in my view is... occasionally. They are not the be all and end all to classroom management - it all depends on the students within that class. We have gone down the lines of "all classes must have a seating plan" in our school, and I am not all that keen. I'm more a believer of "give them enough rope and they will hang themselves". It's what's known in the trade as a "professional judgement call" and depends on the confidence of each individual teacher to control that class.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally anti the idea, but by imposing a mandatory policy could be seen as showing a total lack of confidence in the ability of staff by a senior management team. It certainly makes life easier at the start of a new year, or when you take over a class to have a seating plan, but this can be got around purely by handing books out and calling out names. There is no guarantee that the seating plan is workable - maybe your class all get on which means that in whatever place you put them the students will chat. Very few, if any teachers have the room or lack of numbers to sit each student on their own. And when you get to secondary school, sitting a class boy then girl can be worse than sitting each gender together.

The whole issue is a minefield and often, in my experience got around by allowing the students to sit where they like and moving them if they don't do enough work.

I went into a the class next to mine today where a new (but experienced) teacher was really struggling with a bottom set. They had been put in a seating plan, a requested, and because the teacher was learning the names, this was unlikely to change in the near future. I was already looking after one student who likes playing to the crowd, and went in to find one student crawling around under a desk and another shouting "See You Next Tuesday - do you know what I mean?" repeatedly. The teacher was trying valiantly, if in vain, to get around and help the class, but ultimately few were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing. I apologised to my colleague and then ranted at the students for 5 minutes, explaining that they were no longer at primary school and should behave their age, and that in a few years time they would be entering a competitive job market and guess who writes them a reference? The nice, but grinning boy sat near me (I think he thought I couldn't see him) was grinning, so I pointed out that although we can't write anything bad on a reference, the telling thing is the lack of words. I then left the classroom with the students in silence. It's easy to do when they aren't your class, I hasten to add.

Now I'm not saying that this happens in every classroom where there's a seating plan, but they aren't the answer to all classroom problems.

Give teachers some credit, and let them decide.