Timetable Construction

 School Timetable Construction

The average secondary school requires a significant amount of staff time to create a basic timetable. As we all know, producing the first draft of a timetable is rarely the finished article. Reallocation of staffing and resources, and then the usual in year issues that present themselves, means that the actual time spent by the person responsible for building and reviewing the timetable can be up to three or even four times this initial requirement. This could involve weeks of valuable staff time taken up managing the timetable. Time that is costly and could be better spent, especially, as is normally the case, when the timetable is managed by a member of SLT. We can help.

Annual school timetable creation

We offer a range of timetable construction and consultancy services and have over 25 years’ experience working in large secondary schools with a high staff turnover and a wide range of rooms and resources that all need taking into consideration when constructing and managing a school timetable. Whether you’re working on one or two week timetable and whether you have a 4, 5 or 6 period day we’re able to help you.

As a minimum, we can help you construct your first draft of your annual school timetable. All you will need to provide us with is a curriculum model and the required staff deployment. From there we will initiate a discussion with senior leaders about what the timetable needs to deliver - the 'done with' rather than 'done-do' approach.  You can be involved every step of the way or leave it all to us!

In-year timetable adaptations and CPD

Rarely does the initial September timetable end up being the one that completes the academic year. Staff changes, secondments, school improvement priorities and the need for CPD to form part of teachers working time and for line managers to have sufficient monitoring time, means adaptations are often required.

Our timetable management consultancy means we’re on call to support you throughout the year with any required changes, such as:

• • Members of staff leave and you change the staffing model

  • Heads of Department to be able to monitor their departmental lessons once per rotation

  • Roll forward of years after GCSEs finish

  • Adding extracurricular activities to the timetable

  • Streaming changes

Timetable amendments for interventions

Additional reasons for a mid-year timetable review may include specific amendments to support planned interventions. Again, this is another area we can support with ongoing timetable consultancy. Examples may include:

• • All Yr 11 Maths or English lessons to run at the same time

  • Introduce mandatory additional periods to the school day for KS4

  • Create bespoke intervention groups

  • All your specialist teachers focused on KS4 or Yr 11

Nova T6 and Timetabler Specialists

At Woodson TCC, we work with all the main applications for timetable construction. Whatever system you traditionally use, we will be able to support you. We have worked with Nova-T6 since 2009 and so we are skilled in how the finer points of Nova-T6 work and how to create a timetable model and cycle that is flexible enough to meet the needs of the school. 

The way the initial setup and construction on the model is completed in Timetabler, is vastly different from Nova-T6 and requires a different approach and skillset. Again, having worked with Timetabler for many years, we’re able to build you a timetable quickly and efficiently.

More recently the move, by a large number of schools, to using Arbor as their MIS with its in built timetable management functionality has left schools with a gap in their timetabling skillset. Whilst it is possible to undertake the timetabler training with Arbor, we’re already proficient in its use and can save you the time and effort. If you’re in the process of moving your MIS to Arbor, then why make the job harder. Use Woodson TCC to manage all your timetabling requirements in Arbor.  

We offer the following service packages.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss costings.