If 15 students want Art, and 12 want Biology, and you have to cut one of these classes – which should go? If the group of 12 was much keener on Biology than the 15 are for Art, would this matter? What if five of the Biology group were expected to leave next year anyway, and others in this same group were poor academic students? What if line structures were unable to grant any more than say ten out of the 15 requests for Art? Would you still run Biology over Art? Some timetable software can even automatically deduce the best arrangement of what subjects to run, or how many classes to run, within specific guidelines set by the school. Instead of the raw ‘numbers of student requests’, what matters more is the preferential weight of students who can be granted these subjects, together with the likelihood they will actually complete the subject. But like many aspects in the complex art of timetabling, this is a hidden cost, understood by very few.

This is far from best practice: it costs schools thousands and affects students’ educational opportunities. If enough students ask for a subject, it will run. The age old, inefficient approach to setting what to run is based on student requests. Many schools are unaware of the huge impact that determining classes to run has on their bottom line, as well as educational aims. This is equivalent to saving over one full time teaching load!” – Tom Massarella, HT Administration, Dapto High School Do you need to build that extra science laboratory? Or could you change your curriculum structures to improve occupancy rates on your existing laboratories at no extra cost? When was the last time you reviewed structures? Are your current staff trained or experienced enough to perform this assessment? Are they hindered by ‘resistance to change’ and a legacy of past practices? Do they need encouragement or allowances to conduct a proper review? How much could you save? A real example: “Using a more complex vertical structure with Yr12 and 11, we saved over 37 periods. Is this most efficient? Can you run one core class that is ‘also’ a practical class? Can you split three into four? Can you combine classes in some subjects? Careful analysis of timetable structures to maximise class sizes within acceptable limits may well cut your staffing costs by thousands. Do you really need that extra practical class? Or are you hindered by a legacy of previous years, which dictates that you ‘always’ split pairs of core classes into three practical classes. Setting the number of core classes, or how core and (smaller) practical classes merge together can play a part.

Well before we even begin to staff classes, optimisations can be made in the structure of a timetable.

School timetabling software