Nova T6 - Covid Timetable for September

[House100]

Hi All

 

I am new to timetabling this year, first time through (and my first post on here). I am in the middle of scheduling a normal timetable (secondary with 6th form) on Nova for September. It is likely that it will be difficult to have all students on site at the same time so normal timetable is unlikely to apply in the new academic year!

 

I would be really interested to hear what others are doing to create what some are referring to as a Covid timetable for September. I have seen some some suggestions about splitting the population from 2 into 4 to reduce numbers on site but have not seen much more than that.

 

Be great to hear your thoughts.

[Linfit]

We have gone ahead and built a normal timetable assuming normal working.

There are a number of reasons for still doing this even if you are not sure if it will be required for the start of term.

 

You need to know that your proposed curriulum model will staff and schedule when normal working is resumed.

Staff need to know what groups they are going to be responsible for even if they are not seeing them full time.

You have to resolve issues with options choices and related stuff.

You need to know what "normal" in your school will look like when things do eventually get back on track, so you have something to work towards.

 

I would rather do it now than have to start the whole process in the Autumn when there will no doubt be multiple other pressures to deal with.

 

We may have to look at doing a "Covd" reduced capacity timetable as well, but we have decided to look at that afterwards in the light of developments in the next month or so and we still may use the full timetable as a starting point anyway.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Linfit

[House100]

Thanks for the reply.

 

We are taking the same approach, timetable as normal but then one eye on something else for September for all the same reasons you highlighted above.

 

Its the something else I am not too sure about!!

[minimoo]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/573163470289958/

[MkII]

Timetabler have produced guidelines with some interesting ideas:

https://www.timetabler.com/covid-19/

 

I think a standard timetable will work for us.

 

Sets for those subjects that use them plus Option subjects.

 

As long as all classes are populated to Teams we can work on a reduced timetable from that

[snozzcumber]

Thanks for posting the TimeTabler pdf Mkll.

 

It has some interesting ideas... The bit on splitting Years into several Teaching Populations was particularly helpful.

 

It even mentions how you can trace the contacts of any infected students!

[Nearthemark]

We have gone ahead and built a normal timetable assuming normal working.

There are a number of reasons for still doing this even if you are not sure if it will be required for the start of term.

 

You need to know that your proposed curriulum model will staff and schedule when normal working is resumed.

Staff need to know what groups they are going to be responsible for even if they are not seeing them full time.

You have to resolve issues with options choices and related stuff.

You need to know what "normal" in your school will look like when things do eventually get back on track, so you have something to work towards.

 

I would rather do it now than have to start the whole process in the Autumn when there will no doubt be multiple other pressures to deal with.

 

We may have to look at doing a "Covd" reduced capacity timetable as well, but we have decided to look at that afterwards in the light of developments in the next month or so and we still may use the full timetable as a starting point anyway.

I agree completely, I am currently writing timetables for a small number of schools and producing something that is complete for September that can then be stripped back if needed.

[EduTechSLT]

Some schools have tried to minimise swapping between class groups within a year, by using, say, 4 bands. i.e the students in 7A, 7B, 7C ,7D. This means that if due to COVID they can only have a quarter of the year group in at a time they can invite bands into school across the week and they follow their set timetable. Its a bit more of a faff to prepare, but I think will save a world of pain as we begin to open fully as the year progresses.

[House100]

Timetabler have produced guidelines with some interesting ideas:

https://www.timetabler.com/covid-19/

 

I think a standard timetable will work for us.

 

Sets for those subjects that use them plus Option subjects.

 

As long as all classes are populated to Teams we can work on a reduced timetable from that

 

Would you mind sharing how you are populating classes to Teams?

[Nearthemark]

Would you mind sharing how you are populating classes to Teams?

I wonder it it's a mis-type, and should say populating classes to SIMs????

[staffman73]

I have taken over responsibility for timetabling as part of a team this year. There was a timetable created for the year under normal circumstances, but a second timetable was created outside SIMS to allow for bubbles, staggered start and end times etc. This is fiendishly complicated, where not all lessons are the same length and the school day is different for different days for different year groups.

 

It was created on Excel and for half a term we have been using it as a temporary measure. With the current restrictions getting worse not better it looks like we are going to have to use it for the rest of the year (It has already been successful in Covid terms as the one case we have had resulted in 3 teachers and 20 students being told to self isolate by test and trace). I would now like to get the timetable into SIMS but I can't work out how as we would need to change the session times and lesson length during the year which is advised against. On top of this the lessons would have to be 5 minutes long to allow for all the differences and include movement times and breaks and lunches as part of the timetable!

 

Am I biting off more than I am going to able to do?

 

Thanks for any help.

[Nearthemark]

Am I biting off more than I am going to able to do?

 

Quite possibly!

 

If the classes all have the same number of periods (even if some are doubles) and the timings for each yeargroup are known, then it may be worth creating the new timetable with this in mind but not showing the various times on the timetable. At least SIMs will show what's going on then, even if the times are out.

 

If you need to change the cycle, then that's another can of worms completely - this link has some info, the general concensus seems to be to avoid changing the cycle during the academic year though.

 

https://faq.scomis.org/kb16581/

 

Mark

[Linfit]

We have staggered starts and ends and staggered breaks, but we have used Nova for the emergency timetable. As long as the number of lessons is the same across the school, it should work, you just ignore the times. It does have the benefit of allowing lesson monitor to work properly and cover, if you use them, although our cover manager has to manually edit the times of the lessons depending on the year group.

[staffman73]

Thanks to both of you.

 

Unfortunately we don't have the same number of lessons in each year group, Key Stage 3 are still doing 5 lessons a day, but Key Stage 4 are doing more, and not consistent across the days either.