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[Sphalerite]

Do you get occasional problem of children stepping on the plate and promptly drop the adult into the hatch?

Yes, which is why one tile below the hatch I have a safe floor that can easily be escaped from.  I've never seen a one Z level drop do more than stun a dwarf, so if an adult is standing in the wrong place they just fall, get back up, and then go about their business.

[Noble Digger]

The easiest way to get a number (all) of the fortress' children in a room is to construct floors in that room, place a lockable door, give the rest of the fortress a lot of work to do, then order the floors removed. All the nobles and children will run to do it. Then you just lock them all in and cancel the floor removals. You might have to do a bit of micromanagement to get everyone you want locked in, inside, and nobody you don't, so it can help if it's a system of doors instead of just one, and if there are targets (removable floors) in each section of the airlock.

[Urist Mcinternetuser]

Do you get occasional problem of children stepping on the plate and promptly drop the adult into the hatch?

I had a child triggered pressure plate which trapped them in a small room (by closing the in and out doors), the pressure plate opened a floor hatch which led to a ramp to another z level and a door. The pressure plate after the door would then lock the previous door, close the hatches and unlock the doors leading to the food stockpile. but right before the ramp (which was covered by a floor hatch) I had an adult triggered pressure plate which unlocked the door to the food stockpile and, closed the hatch. Does that make any sense? - Urist Mcinternetuser.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Another way is a "cell" setup. You can then only have 4-6 rooms set in an airlock area. If there is nothing to do in there but remove constructions in one of the 6 rooms, you can ensure that you only lock up children even if half your fortress is idle.

[Beeskee]

You can assign children to a burrow and they generally stay in there, as long as they are old enough to stop following their parents around. The 'following' thing killed my generation fort, as a dozen children tried to follow a parent through corridors meant for one or two dwarfs, all the time.

[alway]

So how do you manage to seperate the children out in the first place? I wonder if you could force them into cages, that would be good, it even improves FPS a bit.

For my Dwarven Children's Academy, I used a system of pressure plates set to trigger for citizens in a size range chosen so only dwarven children would trigger it.  The child diverters were placed in high-traffic corridors in the main fortress, so that children would inevitably step on them eventually.  Stepping on the pressure plate would open floor hatches before and after, which would trap the child in place, and open up a side door leading to a passage to the academy.  The child would have no choice but to proceed down the side passage.  In the academy I had a similar mechanism set to trigger for adults, so when a child grew up he would be automatically sent back to the main fortress.

The Academy had a craftdwarf's workshop for strange moods, and I had a system set up so I could drop materials in from above.  The idea was that if a child went into a mood, I could look at his demands and then choose exactly what kind of metal or rock or whatever I wanted his artifact to be made from.  The children didn't do any other useful work, but just spent all their time hanging out under a waterfall becoming super happy from the mist and gaining legendary social skills.  In retrospect it would have been clever to put vital fortress defense levers under there, since children will pull levers and would never have been far from them, but I built the fortress defenses long before I thought of making the academy.

Do you get occasional problem of children stepping on the plate and promptly drop the adult into the hatch?

Even if that did happen, there is an automated exit area for those who are too old. So they would find their way out if an adult got in.