Separation:
Students that should not be placed in the same class. These students will be “forced” apart where possible.
Only use for the most essential situations or placements become mathematically impossible and classes become unbalanced.
Separations only need to be entered once (one-way) for them to take effect. E.g. If John needs to be separated from Bruce you only have to enter this separation against John, you don't need to do the same against Bruce.
Separations can also be applied to one teacher, these will result in an alert if a student is placed with this teacher.
Pairing:
Students that should be placed in the same class. These students will be “forced” together where possible.
Only use for the most essential situations or placements become mathematically impossible and classes become unbalanced.
Pairings only need to be entered once (one-way) for them to take effect. E.g. If Sue needs to be paired with Tom, you only have to enter this pairing against Sue, you don't need to do the same with Tom.
Pairings can also be applied to one teacher, these will result in an alert if a student is not placed with this teacher.
Preferences:
Class Creator will attempt to place students with 1+ of their preferences where possible.
The more preferences a student has the more likely they will be placed with a preference. If a student does not have many preferences they may be hard to place and classes may be imbalanced.
Therefore if you elect to use preferences (3, 4 or 5) we recommend each student has the maximum number completed.
Important:
Preferences or Pairings will appear RED if a student has a conflicting Separation.
The Separation will override the Preference or Pairing. Therefore we recommend the student is allocated new, non-conflicting, Preferences and Pairings.
Please remind staff to use Separations and Pairings only for essential situations. If they enter too many it will not be possible to meet them all and classes will become imbalanced. Therefore separations & pairings must be prioritized for only the most essential situations.