[HPforGrownups] Re: Houses and classes

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 88953

On 16 Jan 2004 at 12:50, Peter Felix Schuster wrote:

> Hi Shaun!
> 
> "Shaun Hately" wrote:
> > It depends on the school - houses are a convenient administrative 
> > grouping, so they are sometimes used to assign classes - but 
> > certainly not all schools do that. I had five years in schools run 
> > on British lines and from memory, we went like this.
> 
> Forgive me asking, but was there also some kind of "sorting" into the 
> houses? Or could you choose which house to go to? Did the teachers 
> decide?

There was kind of a sorting - though we weren't told much about it, 
I found most of this out later. Basically at our senior school, 90% 
of us coming in had attended one of the school's two prep schools - 
so in most cases, the staff at the senior school could easily find 
out about us. When deciding who went into what house, they'd talk 
to our teachers at the junior schools, and make decisions based on 
what they were told. The biggest defining characteristic was the 
Housemaster - some boys were placed into particular Houses simply 
because it was believed that that Housemaster was the best to deal 
with them (apparently this happened to me - my Housemaster was the 
school's pastoral officer as well, and they decided I needed clear 
access to pastoral care). They'd also make decisions to separate 
boys who caused trouble together and ensure they were in different 
houses, or to make sure a boy who had a hard time making friends 
wasn't separated from all those that he had - that type of thing. 
Most boys didn't really need this type of handling - so they went 
into a pool and were basically spread out almost randomly to ensure 
we had equal numbers. Over the years they've tried a lot of 
different methods to try and make the process more organised for 
the vast bulk of students - personality testing, and the like.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia