Teacher's Pet creates class lists for schools:
See a real school example.
Different requirements usually conflict with each other. The outcome depends on how much each requirement suppresses or gives in to others. You control this by adjusting the weighting of each requirement.
This Quick Guide demonstrates how easy it is to use Teacher's Pet.
Following capabilities differentiate our algorithm from others:
The reason behind such differences is that all other solutions use primitive sorting algorithms, which they openly admit on their websites, but our algorithm is way more intelligent. It is like the engine of a lawn mower vs. the engine of a four wheel drive. See our Features page for more details.
How long does it take?
Download the sample data files from our Help page, and follow our Quick Guide, you can finish the end-to-end process to create the class lists in one hour. If you are not technology-savvy, you may need to resort to our detailed user's manual during your first use. This may take several hours.
After the one-off learning time, this is how long you need to spend each year:
| 10 mins: | Pick your own class-composition requirements. |
| 20 mins: | Export student data from other school management system. |
| 20 mins: | Change the file and column names of the exported spreadsheet according to our requirement. |
| 5 mins: | Upload the data files into the system. |
| 5 mins: | Send "pick my friend" emails to all students, so that they can pick their own friends on our portal. |
| 30 mins: | Repeat the class-list creation process, adjusting the weightings of different requirements, until the outcome is satisfactory. |
| Total: | 1.5 hours |
Concerned about privacy? We take industry-first-class measures to protect your privacy. See our Security and Privacy White Paper.
Where do we fit into your whole picture? We are not there to compete with your existing school management system. Instead it is a supplement. Those can do many, we can do only one, which none of them can do.
Teacher's Pet is based on an innovative and revolutionary mathematical algorithm that the world has never seen. It can follow any number of
class-composition requirements and their weightings, allocate many hundreds of students into dozens of classes in seconds, giving three friends
to each student, leaving none friendless, and the outcome is guaranteed to be mathematically most optimized. See the
real class lists created by Teacher's Pet for a real school. To know why our algorithm is so advanced, see our
Features page.
Teacher's Pet has an intuitive user interface which allows teachers to visualize the class allocation result instantly, for example, see how many friends
each student has in the new class.
If you are a very small school, and you don't have other class-composition requirements to consider, such as academic level, behaviour, special needs, exclusions, etc., then you probably don't need Teacher's Pet. For example, to allocate 40 students into two classes, even if you mix them randomly, on average each student will still have two or three friends, with few or even no students being left friendless.
However, if you have more than two classes, especially if you also have other requirements to consider, then you start to benefit from Teacher's Pet. The bigger your school, the bigger the benefit.
For example, when you allocate 200 students into 8 classes, to do it randomly, on average each student will have less than one friend, with close to 100 students left friendless. However, if you use Teacher's Pet, each student can have three friends, with no student left friendless.
Different schools have different requirements and priorities on their class composition. It is more obvious between different cultural regions. Instead of hard-coding a fixed set of requirements, Teacher's Pet allows teachers to pick their own set of requirements, or even create new requirements. The new requirement can be as strange as
"Students studying French should to be together, while those studying Japanese should be evenly spread across all classes, but we don't care how those studying Chinese spread or cluster."
All teachers need to do is to describe the requirement to us. After an hour, the teacher can start to use this new requirement.
The engine is able to create class lists from hundreds of students following dozens different requirements, and it runs as fast as if there is only one.
By nature, most of the class-composition requirements conflict with each other. Using Teacher's Pet, teachers can set the weightings of each requirement to fine-tune the created class lists. The smart engine does the heavy lifting, while the teachers have full control of the outcome.
Teacher's Pet is able to achieve on average three friends per student, guaranteeing at least one friend for each student, in the meantime observing ten other class-composition requirements, each with its own weighting. See the real class lists created by Teacher's Pet for a real school.
Instead of asking teachers to manually enter every friend for every student into the system, which takes hours, Teacher's Pet automatically sends emails to all students at the same time. There is a secure link in the email. A student clicks the link, it brings him to his own page, and he picks his friend in five minutes. Half an hour later, the whole grade finishes picking their friends.
All other data can be exported from the school management system and imported into Teacher's Pet in just a few clicks, without any manual data entry. This means that the end-to-end class list creation can be finished in two hours.
Registering a school and paying subscription (6 minutes)
End-to-end process to create your class lists (18 minutes)
Using the weightings of requirements to control the outcome (10 minutes)
Waverley Christian College eagerly took on "Teachers Pet" to assist us in grouping students equitably for the next year’s classes. We have been extremely impressed with the simplicity and ease with which this has been achieved. Pressure on staff has been reduced in sorting manually through the many competing factors and student diversity issues. Many thanks for the genius of the program.
Joe Belousoff, Head of Primary, Waverley Christian College
Teacher’s Pet has taken the trouble out of organising classes for next year. It is so quick and easy to use, just pop in your students’ details and it gives you your classes. It takes into account so many factors at once, that I previously thought would be impossible to consider when trying to put together classes. We now have three great, cohesive and manageable classes ready for next year, with each student having three to four friends in the new class.
Joshua Brewer, Year 4 Teacher, Waverley Christian College
We used Teacher’s Pet for the first time in 2016. Staff found it easy to use and appreciated the opportunity to make requested changes to the developers that helped us to refine our process further. Being a smaller school, we could only apply minimal parameters. Nevertheless, our classes were balanced and both students, parents and teachers were happy with the result.
Sharee Gaiser, Head of Junior School, Oxley Christian College
Thank you for creating that website, both my sons were happy to get into their new classes with some of their friends!
Sharon Pantling, parent
Teacher's Pet has saved staff hours and hours of work. It is so simple to use and easy to manipulate classes to ensure the correct balance occurs. Great product!
Rob Naylor, Assistant Principal, Waverley Christian College
Dear Team at Teacher's Pet, I just wanted to take some time to thank you for the software that you have put together that really cut down on what is traditionally a long laborious process. Using Teacher's Pet to create our class lists for next year made the process far more efficient and allowed us as teachers to focus on the important task of making sure that we created a great mix of students for next year's classes. You saved us hours! It is clear that you have really listened to and understood the needs of teachers in putting this together. Thanks again, Adam Honeybun
Adam Honeybun, Year 5 teacher, Waverley Christian College
