This article will show you how to balance new applicants into tutor or registration groups using the sorting hat wizard
One of the tasks schools face with new year groups is deciding which tutor group (also known as 'registration groups') to place students into. This process can become tricky, especially if you need to balance multiple factors, such as ethnicity, gender, or previous school. That’s why we developed a feature called 'The Sorting Hat'.
To access the Sorting Hat, click on 'Enrolment,' and then under 'Post Enrolment,' you'll see 'Sorting Hat.'
You will then be directed to a page where you should select the year group from the dropdown menu, and then click the button below to continue.
This section will ask you to select which group(s) you would like to use.
Some of these groups will come from your MIS, and if you don’t see the groups you want, you can add them yourself or edit the names in your MIS.
On the next screen, you will be asked to decide which factors you wish to use to 'balance' your groups.
We have listed the common factors that schools consider when creating a group. You also have the option to add additional factors, such as 'current school,' or if you wish to use one of the questions from your application form, you can do so by clicking the '+ New Criteria' button.
Once you have selected the criteria you wish to balance, please 'drag and drop' the factors to arrange them in order of importance.
If you would like the Sorting Hat to sort your classes by a question on your application form, make sure the question uses a 'dropdown list' (where there can be only one answer), so the feature knows how to sort it.
Making Manual Changes
On this screen, before starting the process of letting the wizard assign students to groups, you might want to make some manual changes first.
- Pair With Students: This function helps to ensure that selected students are placed in the same group during the allocation process. This option helps schools keep friendship groups together where possible when assigning students to groups.
- Avoid: Use this option to ensure that specific students are placed in separate groups if you need to keep them apart.
- Proposed Form Group: Use this function if you are certain that a student must be placed in a specific group; you can manually assign them to that group.
- Lock: By using this function, you instruct the system to rearrange students to balance a particular factor, ensuring that the selected student's placement remains unchanged.
If you have also used the Transition Tool to obtain data from your feeder schools, you can use the "Get pair / avoid data" button to retrieve the information about friendship groups from the Transition Tool and populate it into your Sorting Hat, to avoid having to enter those selections manually.
Allocating Students into Groups
When you're ready to proceed with the sorting process, select all students and click the 'Allocate Students' button. The system will then assign students to the most suitable groups, factoring in all manual adjustments. It will also work hard to follow your 'avoid' and 'pair with' preferences as closely as possible.
Checking the Allocated Groups
After the system has allocated students to groups, a pop-up window will give you the option to 'View totals.' Here, you’ll see a breakdown of how many students are in each group and how the factors you’ve chosen to balance have been handled.
If you would like to make changes after reviewing the numbers for each group, you may manually adjust some allocations on the main screen. You can do this by changing the 'proposed group' manually and then clicking on the 'view totals' button again to see how the manual changes have affected the numbers in the groups.
Exporting the Groups
Once you are happy with your allocations, they can be exported to your MIS. Click to follow the process for your MIS here: