Redwing500

To Keith J, thank you for taking time out to respond. Nova makes no decisions for us. I drive the whole process, myself. It starts as a large combing chart (60pds yrs 10 - 13), in excel, then moves to Nova for yr9 and down. The in-built conflicts of the staff loadings are such that it wouldn't be possible to schedule the tt with any commercial software without the timetabler (me in this case) having a very good understanding of what sorts of swaps are feasible and the degree to which these swaps introduce the required flexibility. To a greater extent, I find I'm deducing the timetable that we will have to have, more than I'm actually operating from a plethora of choices. I was trained by a gentleman (the then head of ICT / curriculum assistant head) that had written our timetable (before it became much more complicated) in Nova, for 10yrs (he had used Timetabler, also) and he insisted (even then) that there was no silver bullet to be found in any software. My instincts, having done this job for 15yrs, are that he was correct. Really, I'm just looking for the software that is most easily moved to, from Nova, if I've got to move. Point 9 '....a particular view point' - at my age, I certainly have one of those...

We are looking to move from SIMS to ISAMS. I've been writing the tt (school is 11 - 18 with a large sixth form) using Nova T6 for around 15yrs. Most of the serious lifting is done outside Nova (in Excel or on graph paper) anyway, and I'm not driving for change as I'm two yrs from retirement and in no rush to learn a new set of procedures. Nevertheless, I'm being pressured to consider Timetabler (because it's cheaper!?) and or Edval. We could purchase Nova as a standalone (would need to obtain some options software from somewhere) and I'm moving towards pushing for that as it's the devil I know. Dom is clearly a proponent for Nova. There are others with differing points of view. Having only really used Nova (went on a Timetabler training course a decade ago), I'm at a loss, so some further opinion would be much appreciated.

Stuck at work trying to add a new A level subject (Psychology!) to SIMS Options. Tried adding in Nova T6, then exporting to options (bands only). Didn't work. I generally only work on Nova T6 but am trying to produce an implementation for next year's Yr12 SIMS options. Anyone here able to help? Would be forever indebted.