WCBS partners, October ReSolutions Ltd, who provide the well-known timetabling software TimeTabler, recently ran a year-long project on behalf of Nesta, and funded by DfE. The aim was to give Timetablers better tools and greater confidence in dealing with the increasing numbers of part-time teachers in schools, and thereby provide the best quality timetables for the school, staff and students.
Some schools are already running with levels of 40% part-time staff, and numbers are expected to increase due to:
• staff seeking a better work/life balance – happy, healthy, well-motivated staff is what schools need
• schools needing to adapt by employing more part-timers to cover the curriculum
• and perhaps particularly in minority or specialist subjects (eg Psychology or Computer Science).
For this project, Timetablers in real schools ran a series of tests, notionally converting some full-time staff to part-time before investigating a range of scenarios within their existing timetabling data.
The results make for a most interesting read for anyone interested in timetabling, and have been used to add many new part-timer features to the TimeTabler software.
You can read the fully illustrated and comprehensive report here. And if you have a question or comment, please send it to letusknow@timetabler.com
TimeTabler are WCBS Partners and have spent the past 40 years dedicating themselves to supporting school timetablers in the UK and around the world: https://www.timetabler.com/
