How is timetabling done?

[Snap8TheCat]

No issue with school whatsoever, just a conversation I'm having with DH. Ds1 is about to start high school and it's much bigger than the middle school he's been at so must be much more complicated to sort out with pupils/ teachers classrooms etc. This is also the first time he has been ability set.

DH disagree how it might be done.

Is timetabling done by pen/ paper and a clever person or by a computer program?

Starts with options and blocking for 6th form and gcse and works down.

Part timers have a massive influence. For example if you have a part time maths teacher who works mon tue and wed only and you have a class with 6 hours a fortnight then unless you split the class between 2 teachers then you have to timetable them on those days.

And let's say you have a part time Drama teacher - a gcse drama class might have 5 hours a fortnight. If she works Mon-wed then it can fit (mon, tue, wed, mon, wed) but then if another option subject teacher is part time, let's say music, and only works Wed, thu, fri, then that won't be possible to timetable if drama and music are blocked together.

You can end up with entire year groups' timetables being created around one member of staff's childcare arrangements.

As a part time maths teacher what happens in my school is that I am timetabled 9 or 10 days a fortnight for random hours and have to work my childcare around what the school gives me.

That's probably what should happen.

Only if you want your part timers to quit. I was lucky to find a very cheap and very flexible childminder otherwise I wouldn't have been able to work.

I used to work somewhere that changed timetable every term.

I wouldn't have thought it changed that much year on year. When we chose our subjects we had to pick one from each column - so assumed the resources where already allocated and students had to fit into that.

Noble that is rubbish of your school. Our part timers get full or part days off, and as far as i know ( ie for the four in my faculty i know well) get the same days off every year, which is the part timers wish in each case.
Our timetable is done like other posters mentioned. One member of slt does it by faculty and by paper, ie as science we always get shafted and have y11 p6 on Fridays, and she starts with sixth form, then ks4 then ks3, and then our head of faculty decides who is teaching which group when,

Our school busts a gut for part timers. Some don't come in period 1 or period 5. All of them state which days they want off and I can't think of anyone who isn't given what they want.

I should move to your school, Cauli!

What's most annoying is that it's specifically maths teachers at my school that are shafted in this way, because we see the kids so often. Other teachers on the same contract in different department get totally cushy timetables.

I have a question about timetables. The dc were asked at the end of year 8 about which languages they'd like to do next year. They could either do one or two of the languages they'd been studying. Dd was encouraged to do two as she gets good grades in languages and both her mfl teachers were keen for her to continue. Dd wanted to do both so we returned the form saying so.

The timetable appeared on the parent section of the website on Friday and says she is only doing one language. I do think it's a timetabling error. I suppose the only other possibility is they've decided no one is doing more than one language for some reason, although I'd have thought they'd have communicated that to kids/ parents and the kids who picked to do both weren't given the option of expressing a preference of which language to do. Dd got slightly better grades in the language she is not timetabled to do.

Question is when do I contact the school to ask about it? I don't like to contact them in the holidays. There are two insets at the beginning of term, but won't it be too late to change the timetable by then? Thank you

SLT will be in school on 16th and 17th for a level results and the following 23rd and 24th for GCSE results.

I'd email in. Sounds odd, although it's possible there was very very little uptake for 2 languages and so they didn't think it would be viable. Fewer than 15 kids means the subject is running at a loss I believe.

Lara Not a teacher.
I would contact school ASAP by email, to maybe Tutor, head of year, & head of MFL.

Something like

I apologise for contacting you in the holidays but thought I should enquire about this as soon as possible incase any of you are working at this time, rather than leave it to the start of term. I have copied all of you as I am not sure who to contact so thought the scattergun approach might be best.

I see from the parent portal that DD has only been timetabled to do Language X, rather than both X and Y as requested on the options process. As we hadn't heard to the contrary before the end of term we had assumed she would be doing both X and Y. Is this an error on the timetable, or is the option of doing both languages no longer available? If DD had been asked to select one language only she would have picked Y over X.

At some convenient point, can someone clarify for me?

Kind regards

Thanks both. I did wonder if maybe they aren't able to run both, but then I think the dc should have been notified and given the opportunity to select their first preference language like the ones who only picked one language were.

Most big schools would use software, but you tend to put some stuff in by hand first.

I did my timetable this morning, version 2 after some tweaks to allocation, took less than an hour and most of that was getting the computer to not put all the year 7 maths lessons last lesson!

The joy of computer timetabling compared to by hand (which I have done too) is that the computer can say no, whereas if you do it by hand you just think you've not found the right combination yet!

I used to timetable and I used a computer program (Timetabler). I loved that part of my job.

A mixture of both at my school. It's especially complicated in my school as the school is split site with the two sites far apart. Teachers can only travel between sites at set times and the timetable has to be manipulated by a human in the computer to make it work. They start with the sixth form then work their way backwards. There are also key people, especially in small and one person departments who are keystones and the whole timetable has to be jigsawed around them.

timetable has to be manipulated by a human in the computer

Ooh a bit like in the film Tron?

Haha, I really hope that's how they do it.

DumbledoresApprentice

always wanted to ask how the teachers get from one site to the other, (especially during the day).

If the site is some distance from the other is transport provided or are you just expected to make your own way?

Also is it done during breaks and lunch, PPA or worked in as trwvel time?

In my school most people sort their own transport and claim mileage and we have a contract with a taxi company for the handful of staff each time who don't drive. Travels are break and lunch at my school but other schools may have different set ups depending on distance.

All timetable programs are manipulated by humans. The main way is in setting everything up correctly at the start. Problems arise when you start with the wrong assumptions from, e.g., part-time staff and department heads.

A program just does what manual timetablers do much more quickly. Most manual timetablers basically produce the same timetable each year with small tweaks. Their school will have the same option blocks each year. It will still take them the best part of the a half-term to produce a working draught, often with the teacher involved completely off-timetable. A computerised timetable can do the same thing in a few days, allowing several scenarios to be compared and the final version fine-tuned.

Timetable programs recognise complexities such as split sites, different lesson times in different key stages, part time workers. As I said, it does what the brain does but 10000x quicker.

By manipulated I mean that it get printed off, altered with pen/paper at various times and the changes fed back in. I don't do timetabling personally so the exact specifics I'm not familiar with. I know that the computer system understands the split site but doesn't, for example, spread the burden of travelling equitably across departments.