Creating A Good School Timetable

 A timetable can be defined as a tabular representation of the times at which certain events are expected to occur. As such, timetabling is a process, which encapsulates all the activities involved in preparing a timetable. A school timetable can be fairly simple or exceedingly complex, depending on the variables involved in making it. Here is some information about school timetabling, the challenges involved and the software that can make the job easier.

Generally, school timetabling has to coordinate the four main variables namely the students, teachers, classrooms and time duration slots or periods. Usually school timetabling involves rotating these variables every week or every fifteen days. This is a simple task for the primary and lower grades, easily achieved by using an excel spreadsheet. High school and university timetabling are completely different altogether and require much more time and effort. To make matters a little more complex, high school teachers tend to have a greater workload than university lecturers do. In addition, students in high school are at an intermediate stage in life, where they need to be kept profitably occupied every hour that they are in the school. As such, high school timetabling is computationally much more difficult than university timetabling, where human judgment applies more.

School timetabling differs between countries and therefore involves different challenges. In China for example, high school students do not get to choose their subjects. They remain in the same classroom throughout the day and only their teachers change every hour. In contrast, most high school students in the U.S.A. study in a system based on units, where each subject is allotted the same number of lessons in every rotation and subjects are ‘lined.’ This makes school timetabling relatively easy. Countries such as Australia, Canada and some European nations on the other hand, have systems, which make school timetabling extremely difficult, and in such cases computational aid is required.

The technical difficulties with complex school timetabling are many, but usually include the following major issues:

1) The need to distribute different subjects across the cycle as widely as possible

2) The requirement in some classes for double periods, e.g. periods where time-consuming science lab work or artwork is involved

3) Problems with allotting teachers to different classes

4) Allotting rooms to classes (particularly a problem when dealing with specialist rooms like science labs and libraries)

5) Deciding at which times of the day, the subjects will be taught (so that the more difficult subjects are not all in the post-lunch time, when the students are less alert)

An increasing need is being felt for software, which has an intelligent and automatic algorithm for creating timetables. These algorithms should ideally take care of both weak and strong variables effectively, while optimizing the utilization of the available resources such as the teachers and classrooms at the same time. Moreover, they should focus on the requirements of schools and universities in order to be able to create customized timetables, quickly and effectively.

Another thing that you should look for in school timetabling software is its capacity to provide an analysis of resource usage and optimization, so that you can be more keenly aware of the effectiveness of your timetable. Recent reports suggest that timetabling software can benefit high schools and universities greatly, by slashing the time required to make these schedules by more than 30%.

School timetabling software can thus be a productive investment, if you want to reduce the time, effort and energy spent on the process. Try out some of the popular software such as Amig Systems' Time Chart or the Cybrosys Edutimer. Alternately, you can also check out the world’s first online school timetabling software, Prime Timetable, which works on PCs and Mac computer platforms equally well. It is sure to make your school timetabling efficient and effortless.