By re-thinking the timetabling document and generating smarter schedules, schools have an amazing opportunity to address teacher workload issues and can dramatically reduce workload and generally make life at school so much easier for all.
Here are clever ways smart timetabling can reduce teacher workload:
1. Reduce syllabus preparation
Increasing the number of occurrences where a teacher receives two or more classes of a subject in a given year can significantly reduce workload. In this scenario, teachers might only need learn or prepare the syllabus once, but for two or more classes.
2. Reduce teacher movement
This can be achieved via smarter rooming algorithms. Saving teachers just five minutes or more a day, can cumulatively save days each year. Reductions of 25% movement have been seen in timetables in some cases, by focusing on this important aspect.
3. More efficient option blocks
More efficient option blocks allow fewer classes to be run, as each have more pupils. The benefit of this is that it unlocks teacher load. The same pool of teachers taking fewer classes means, on average, each teacher is then slightly underloaded. There’s also a reduction in the administration of managing those classes which would otherwise be required.
4. Better balance in class sizes for work equity
The traditional focus on option blocks quality is around the number of pupils satisfied. This is only one of a range of quality metrics schools can look at, but only more advanced timetabling software caters to this.
Download our guide to read on and discover the 25 ways smart timetabling can directly and significantly reduce teacher workload.
