Teacher's Pet - Keeping Friends Together in Classrooms


Teacher's Pet creates class lists for schools:

  • Allocate hundreds of students into a dozen classes in a few seconds.
  • Cater for any number of class-composition requirements, such as
    • Gender balance
    • Academic levels
    • Behaviour
    • Faith
    • Sports
    • Secondary languages (such as mixed, congregated or "4A all French, 4B all Japanese, 4C & 4D mixed)
    • Special needs
    • Certain students must be with certain teachers
    • Certain students must be in certain houses
    • Keeping certain students apart or together
  • Create your own customize requirements of any complex logic.
  • Give three friends to each student in average, no one is left friendless. Students pick their own friends on our portal.

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:

  1. Different school can pick different class-composition requirements.
  2. Create your own customized requirement and start to use it in an hour.
  3. Give a different weighting to each requirement.
  4. The outcome is guaranteed to be mathematically most optimized.

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.

Innovative


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.

Intuitive


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.

Class allocation process


Pick the class-composition requirements (friends, academics, behaviours, faith, sports, special needs, exclusions, etc.) by ticking checkboxes, and assign different priorities to them by adjusting slider bars.
Export students from your school management system into an Excel spreadsheet, and upload it into Teacher's Pet in a few mouse clicks.
Click a button to send "Pick My Friends" emails to all students. They click the secured link in the email, and spend 5 minutes each to pick their own friends on our portal.
Click the "Create class lists" button, and see the result in seconds.
Fine tune the outcome by adjusting the weighting slider bars.
Move students manually through drag and drop.



When do you need Teacher's Pet?


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.

In-depth: why is Teacher's Pet the best class allocation
software in the world?

1.


Pick any combination of class-composition requirements, or create your own

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.

2.


Control the outcome through the weightings

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.

3.


Three friends per student, no one left friendless

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.

4.


Finish end-to-end class list creation in two hours

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.

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