Huh?

Tell me if I should be offended:

At work 5 of us work with these 10 pupils individually for about a half an hour block. As it is difficult to get the pupils to come at staggered times, they all arrive at once, leaving five to sit about until we can get to them. This programme started before I arrived and I abhor it, but I am also loathed to create waves by ending it. It's actually not that bad, so I don't cease the programme.

In the past, each person as been assigned two pupils with which they worked. However, they said that they worked with other pupils when a particular adult couldn't make it to them, or if they were sitting around, just to "help out". It seemed to me that assignations really didn't matter.

But apparently, they do. I just randomly picked pupils to work with, as I had no assigned pupils and it helped me to get to know these kids. I got pulled aside recently by the teachers doing this programme.

"Are we going to have assigned pupils?"

"Do we need it?" I replied.

"Well... we've always had it in the past... it's just I've always worked with Maceo and she's always worked with Claudell..."

So what? I was thinking. But obviously, this was a big deal. "Okay, would you like assigned pupils?"

"Well, it's no bother to me..." (Read: yes, dammit).

So I sit down, assign the pupils to a teacher and we're all happy.

Except I'm the only one who seems to follow the list. Everytime I look up, one of my pupils has been taken by another teacher. They are constantly switching between each other, forgetting to do their own pupils! It's pretty weird, especially since I got pulled up for doing the same thing.

I think I have missed some weirdo Scottish cultural thing, but I'm not sure what it is.