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Is there a way to set a two day rule for one class in Nova-T6? Am I correct in thinking it could be done via Period Type? That seems over complicated but I can't think of another way. If it's not easily possible it's maybe something that should be possible in the next version

Hi, We are starting the process of deciding what is on our wish list for the next academic year in terms of school structure etc. and it would seem we have several questions. Background of school. School structure is we essentially run as 3 separate schools with a common sixth form. Main school (MS), super religious boys (B), and super religious girls (G). Lower school MS runs on an 8 period day (4 double slots, most lessons are doubles), with breaks every 2 periods. Lunch (between 4 and 5) is also split into first and second half of lunch. Sixth form MS runs on an up to 12 period day (8 normal + 2 lunch + 2 afterschool periods) they, however, have free periods. Lower school B runs on a 10 period day (8 normal + 2 afterschool) still in a 2/2/2/2/2 arrangement. Lower school G runs on a 10 period day (8 normal + 2 afterschool) but in a 2/3/1/2/2 arrangement with the first half of lunch defaulting to a teaching period (there are exceptions). On a Monday all hell breaks loose with the lunch period/s swapping positions and period 5 becoming like a citizenship period, shorter than the other days' P5. On a Wednesday there is an additional period between AM Reg and P1 we teach PSHE in (This time is normally assembly). SiMs in the past has just been used as a system to store the bare minimum - ideally I want to move to using it to handle everything... Timetable stuff. Does your school have a timetabled period for registration? (which lesson monitor then copies into the AM Reg?) Do you instead use lesson monitor to delegate when registration will take place (with no official period designated through Nova-T) and instead use the lesson monitor ability to override absence as late for Reg? How many lessons do you have in a day? of what length? How is your school organised, if you have a sixth form do they have different periods to others? Why? Are they just set up as a different Year or as a whole different school section on Nova-T? Do you timetable assemblies in Nova-T? Do you run a carousel of subjects? Do you have a multiple week timetable? Why? If you have extra curricula activities, such as music lessons or sporting events are they also timetabled as alternative provision lessons? Do you use automated timetabling through Nova-T?? Why? Pastoral Stuff Do you have a house based pastoral system or a head of years' system? or hybrid? why? If you run a house system, do you run your reward/sanction behaviour system tied to the houses? e.g. best house gets a reward. Any pastoral responsibilities that occur regularly (e.g. uniform duty, or patrol) are they timetabled? Misc Does your school use cover? How are teachers then notified of the cover? Does your school use exams organiser for internal exams that are not Mocks (e.g. Year 7 end of year tests) even though they are in several rooms at once? How would you organise teacher invigilation for that? How would you mark students on study leave? Is this handled somehow in Nova-T when the timetable is created? Is it done at the start of the year (or when the date of study leave is known)? Or is it left to form tutors to do it after the students are on study leave? Do you have a system whereby lessons might finish "early" but students are encouraged to do "afterschool" activities or enrichment to take you up to a normal finish time? Wow...sorry for the length, any comments are greatly appreciated!

Hi. Having a few problems today. I worked my way through scheduling all of the bands (see pictures). I have added new members of staff. When I print off the overall timetable, the new staff have blank timetables and a lot of the KS3 lessons are missing. When I hover over the bands - I have a 'block not built' message. Have I missed a step somewhere?

Hi all, I would appreciate you thoughts / advice here... As timetabler I've been asked to look into creating after school study registers that would appear on teachers timetables on SIMS. (The registers would follow already existing curriculum groups in year 11, such as "11xa/en") My own thoughts on how I could achieve that are that: I could create an additional 'Period 7' on the Nova model and then just build the newly required sessions. However I've read numerous warnings and golden rules about how I should NEVER change the model in the middle of an academic year and that this can cause massive problems. Someone has suggested that I could use alternative curriculum, however I cannot see how this would be helpful seeing as currently no period exists either for mainstream or alternative. Anyway, assigning an entire year cohort through alternative curriculum is just an unfeasible task. SIMS activities does exist for this purpose but it comes with a price tag, is untested and does not exactly have glowing reviews. I could just do it the old fashioned way with a spreadsheet/db based system. Any ideas appreciated but especially any feedback re points 1 and 2. Thanks.

Dear all, help please before I start smoking again! I've just 'inherited' the TT job (if you know what I mean). One department has asked for a 'lesson' to be created allowing for a small minority of Y7 and 8 students to study one extra humanities lesson a week per term (1 term of history then change to extra geography then RE term 3). I've set this up as an alternative curriculum and called it Hu. This is for our Y7 and Y8 who are both split into 2, 7x/7y/8x. The new lessons are to be called 7p/7q/8p retrospectively. I've managed to create these new classes using the alternative curriculum, assigning teachers and rooms. However, when I come to transfer to SQL, I get a message stating that these lessons are 'not linked' and I have scary orange exclamation marks next to each of the classes I've allocated (such as 7p Mon period 2, 8p Tues period 3). There are 18 lessons in all, all with this 'not linked' warning. Can anyone please shed some light on this? 1. Does the alt curric need to be linked, or should I just export it into into SIMS and then allocate students to the class? 2. If it does need to be linked, how would one go about doing this? Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for your time Best wishes Damien

Hi I am constructing next year's timetable in NOVA T. I have transferred over continuing classes in Y11 and Y13. A member of staff is leaving and I am trying to replace her with another member of staff when allocating classes. When I try to remove the member of staff by holding down Ctrl and right-clicking, I get the following pop up: 'Cluster has locked sessions-attribute cannot be removed' - What can I do about this? Thanks

Hi, I'm currently working on next year's timetable. This is now the second timetable I have produced and the first time I've done it on my own. I've been thinking a lot about how the auto-scheduler works and how to optimise for it and I cant find any info to answer some of my ponderings. For example, obviously, a computer with a faster processor will be able to try more solutions in less time but what about multi core processors? Is Nova T programmed to take advantage of multiple cores? Does it work particularly better with any other hardware configurations than others that people are aware of? Thanks...

Hi I am new to timetabling this year. I work in a 11-18 school with approx 1700 students. I have scheduled KS5 (Y13 and Y12), KS4 (Y11, Y10, Y9) and almost year 7. I am trying to schedule the last block for this year group (Languages - 3 classes with 5 lessons). I have attempted to use the 'schedule' button in the blocks menu (effectively it attempts to autoschedule as far as im aware?!?). I have previously stopped this process after a while using the abort button and it has managed to schedule 3 or 4 of the 5 lessons. However, on this occasion it appears to have scheduled all 5 (i.e. all 5 have turned yellow) but the time is still rotating and i cannot select any other module to carry on. I did this earlier and when i clicked abort it 'lost' the final lesson and returned it to an 'unscheduled' state. Has anyone come across this before and does anyone have any suggestions. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, i understand completely how busy people are at the minute. Take care Ed

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