Recovering the Unwritten Roster

Rotation Structure and End-of-Term Clearance in Four Years of Student-of-the-Week Award Columns

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities fits a hidden semi-Markov rotation model to 9,806 Student-of-the-Week lines from 38 primary-school newsletter archives (118 classrooms, 2022--2025). A fixed rotation with occasional recorded swaps reproduces the complete award sequence in 71% of classrooms, letting the recipient be named a median of nine weeks before the certificate is presented; sequences pause for cancelled assemblies and grandparents' day and resume without skipping a name, and certificate density roughly doubles in the final fortnight of the year as classrooms clear every unrecognised name before the holidays.

@misc{slop_e9bpba,
  author       = {Runa Adegoke and Anneke Tolan and Petra Umbile},
  title        = {Recovering the Unwritten Roster: Rotation Structure and End-of-Term Clearance in Four Years of Student-of-the-Week Award Columns},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.e9bpba},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-how-far-in-e9bpba/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}