The task of constructing / framing a
high school timetable involves the following problems / issues (not an
exhaustive list):
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Assigning periods to classes. There is a need to spread out lessons across the
teaching cycle as much as possible, e.g. to avoid having 3 lessons on the same
day or most of the lessons in Week One of a 2-week cycle.
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Some classes need 'double periods' (2 consecutive periods). This especially
happens with practical lessons such as science lab work or art classes where it
takes a long time to set up equipment.
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Assigning teachers to classes ('staffing'): sometimes the department head
teachers stipulate what the staffing will be, but often there are alternative
teachers that can be given to a class, and the timetabler must make the
decision based on timetabling considerations.
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Assigning rooms to classes. Some subjects require specialist rooms, e.g.
science labs for practicals.
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The last period of a day is often less desired and these must be shared fairly
across all classes
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Some schools assign the same number of periods to all subjects, but more
commonly there are a variety of lengths of classes: 9 periods per day, 8, 7, 5
and so on. If this is the case, it means that it's not possible to have a
'coherent' structure to the timetable. 'Coherent' means that the classes in
each year match up neatly with classes in other years in school-wide
'super-columns'. Non coherent timetables are much more difficult to construct.
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Part-timer teachers need to have certain entire days off. They will either
specify to the school which weekdays they are or simply how many days per cycle
they need off. Such teachers can greatly add to the difficulty of timetabling
when they are assigned to large blocks.
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Classes should be assigned rooms in a way which attempts to give the same room
to the same class (for primary schools) or the same room to the same teacher
(for most high schools / secondary schools) for all or most lessons ('room
constancy').
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Sometimes it is unavoidable to have what is known as a 'split class': this is a
class where one teacher takes it for some lessons and another teacher for other
lessons. This can happen e.g. because no single teacher is available on all
scheduled periods, or because no single teacher can take it without going over
their maximum teaching load. Another definition for a split class is when a
teacher must teach two different grade levels in one period (for example Class
10 French and Class 11 French). This often occurs with less popular subjects,
which are not big enough to be made into separate classes. Split classes are
highly undesirable, especially in private (well funded) schools.
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Off-timetable lessons: sometimes an occasional lesson is scheduled "off the
timetable" meaning before school or after school or during lunch. This usually
happens with older students. It can be a desperate response to intractable
timetabling problems or a compromise reached in order for the school to be able
to offer less popular subjects.
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The application also enables creating all specific divisions of classes into
groups for single period. It is possible to unite / grouping more classes into
one subject / lesson or to have more teachers for one subject / lesson in the
same period.
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JSS school help you to schedule your institution timetable quickly and
accurately.
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School Timetable Framing Software is installed in more than 20 schools in
India [Schools like - Primary, High School, Higher Secondary , Day , Boarding
School , Private , Management and Convent Schools etc..]
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JSS School TimeTable is totally self-checking. For example: it will never allow
you to allocate by mistake any one teacher to two classes at the same time; and
it will always warn you if you begin to put two classes in the same room etc.
etc. This means that the timetable is guaranteed to work when the new academic
year / term starts.
