Timetabler Question

[blm_]

Hi Everyone

 

Hopefully posting this in the right place - looked around and it seemed most appropriate, apologies if I've erred.

 

My school uses Timetabler and this works fantastic for us in regards to timetabling all of our lines, periods, and classes as they are all consistent and have equal share. This then syncs via Synergetic across to Schoolbox where everyone reads their timetable.

 

We do now have a problem. We've introduced some specialist classes that run at different times, for a different length of time, and a different number of times per week. Our school timetable admin (who as great as he is, is not a technically minded person at all, and often hesitant to jump in and try new things) is adament that Timetabler simply cannot do this. As a result, we have a large number of people scrambling to try to come up with a different solution and for weeks we've come up short.

 

Now, those classes are just not being scheduled and we're giving those teachers and students paper timetables and doing paper rolls, and I feel like I'm back at school in the 90s.

 

Does anyone know how we can do what we're achieving to do - is it possible? Are we missing something very striaght forward?

[mrhall]

I don't think timetabler can handle that - the settings of times / periods / lessons is pretty key.

 

But - say your original lessons were an hour long, and started at 9am, 10am, etc... and your new lessons were 30 minutes long and started at 9:30, 10:00, 10:30 - then you could (painfully) re-create your original plan by doubling the number of lessons -making each last 30 minutes, and every previous lesson now is a double... and then your new ones would fit.

 

I suppose you could fill your day with 20 minute lessons - and do the same? I suppose having your original timetable written would make it fairly easy to recreate over new timings?

 

Just how much out of sync are your new specialist classes?

 

Happy to offer help - do email... p.hall2 at beacon-academy.org

 

Peter

[dhicks]

then you could (painfully) re-create your original plan by doubling the number of lessons -making each last 30 minutes, and every previous lesson now is a double... and then your new ones would fit.

 

Just to add (in case people don't already know) - each instance of Timetabler has its own timetable database, you don't open / save a "timetabler" document as you would with Word or similar. Timetabler will quite happily run multiple instances on a single machine, though, you just need to run the installer again and give it a different folder to install into. That way, you can have a timetable to tinker / play with rather than doing that with your live timetable.

[blm_]

The bigger issue is not necessarily that the times line up, though some have this issue, the bigger issue is that we have been told by our timetabler that we cannot have classes with fewer periods. i.e. an English class follows the 5-period-per-week rule, but we want a study that only runs once per week, we've been told this cannot happen.

 

This seems bizarre to me, because surely schools run some subjects with different number of periods. A home room, for example, I know some schools run for, say, 15 minutes but once per week run for a full period.

[mrhall]

SIMS has a thing called "alternative curriculum" which is like a second layer of timetable - and allows us to create things like a maths support session - that only runs two or three times a week.

(Normally in timetabler every class has to have a full weeks worth of lessons... but I wonder whether it would actually stop working if you didn't - I suspect it would be ok).

 

So the alternative curriculum means I can timetable reading intervention... the neat bit is that SIMS remembers where the student used to be - so you can allocate them to the reading intervention - and then when they've finished and you remove them from the reading intervention - they go back to the class they used to be in, without you having to remember where they used to be.

 

Surely some of your subjects have a different number of lessons? We'd have Art on one a week, Geography on 2, Maths on 3 ....

[blm_]

You'd think! But the school has essentially built their entire timetable around the assumption that this can't be done... but I take the approach you do... 'surely it can be done!'. Surely there are schools out there with different number of subjects. Currently, my school, every single subject has the same number of periods each cycle, and anything that doesn't (i.e. if a studnet goes into an alternative pathway, or an intervention program or something), it doesn't go on the timetable and they have to remember it / writei t down.

 

Essentially, that's what I'm looking for advice for! Speaking with timetabler support or reading their documentation just seems to go in circles, so I was hoping to find a school doing it!

[mrhall]

Do you want to message me privately?

Can you share a screen shot of a bit of one of your "activity batches" - that will show how many lessons each subject has. There is no reason why these have to be the same for each subject.

[bobsmith]

With Facility CMIS (the predecessor to Progresso) the timetable software was called "Facility Scheduler" and it could handle different length lessons running at the same time as each other.

 

You had adjustments down to the minute and could pick and mix these lessons.

So we had a 6th form that ran a 3 period day with slightly different break and lunch times to our 5 period day for KS3 and 4. Scheduler and CMIS had no problems handling it.

 

Not seen a school MIS since then with that ability

 

We paid a load of money to Capita when they offered what was supposed to be a similar option - "multiple timetables" - but we ended up getting a refund on that module as they admitted it couldn't actually handle what we wanted.

[AlistairB1983]

With Facility CMIS (the predecessor to Progresso) the timetable software was called "Facility Scheduler" and it could handle different length lessons running at the same time as each other.

You had adjustments down to the minute and could pick and mix these lessons.

So we had a 6th form that ran a 3 period day with slightly different break and lunch times to our 5 period day for KS3 and 4. Scheduler and CMIS had no problems handling it.

Not seen a school MIS since then with that ability

We paid a load of money to Capita when they offered what was supposed to be a similar option - "multiple timetables" - but we ended up getting a refund on that module as they admitted it couldn't actually handle what we wanted.

Arbor can - I set it up at my previous school. There were two distinct days set up: one for KS3 and the other for KS4/KS5. KS3 was L1, L2, Break, L3, L4, Lunch, L5 whereas KS4/5 was L1, break, L2, L3, Lunch, L4, L5. They even had slightly staggered finish times to avoid crushes at the exists. The only thing that was the same for all students was registration and L1, after that they were on completely different timings throughout the day.