A teacher’s day off
A teacher who works four days instead of five has the same hours pressed into fewer of them. Somewhere in the week, a class waits while that teacher is busy with another one.
What each gap buys
Why your timetable has gaps
A free hour stranded in the middle of a class’s day is almost never a mistake. It is the price of something else — and until you know what it bought, nobody can tell you whether it was worth it.
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What each gap buys
Four trades account for most of them. Every one is a rule somebody asked you to keep.
One room, several classes
The lab, the gym, the computer room. Only one class can be in it at a time, so the others move around it — and moving around it is what leaves the hole.
Part-time weeks and arrival times
A teacher who only starts after ten, or leaves before the last period, removes those hours from every class they teach. The week closes around the missing edge.
Level groups and majors
When a whole year splits at the same hour, that hour is spoken for across every class in the year. Anything that does not fit inside it has to sit outside it.
The trade nobody shows you
Most software resolves this quietly: it asks you to take a rule out. Fewer gaps, fewer of the things your staff asked you to keep — and you never see the exchange happen, only the week that comes back.
What to check before you buy anything
Four things worth doing on the week you already have. They cost an afternoon and they change what you ask a vendor for.
- Count the gaps per class, not per teacher. A week that looks fine to the staff room can be the worst one your students have had.
- Mark which gaps sit right after the long break. Those are the ones families notice, because they read as a late start.
- For each gap, write down the one rule that created it. If you cannot name it, nobody has been protecting it on purpose.
- Decide in advance which rules you will not trade. Then a vendor asking you to drop one is answering a question you already settled.
How Schedula handles it
Students first, and in that order
It locks the smallest number of gaps the week allows before it reads a single teacher request. What is left over goes to the staff — never the other way round.
Requests shared out evenly
The aim is not one very happy teacher. It is that the teacher who got least of what they asked for still got a fair share of it.
Every remaining gap, explained
You see the ones that are left and the rule each one is paying for, so the trade is yours to make rather than one made quietly on your behalf.
Questions schools ask
If the software is automatic, why are there gaps at all?
Because your rules disagree with each other, and something has to give. A week with no gaps and no compromises only exists when the rules happen to allow it. What software can do is find the smallest number of gaps your rules permit, and tell you which rule each one is paying for.
Can a school have a week with no gaps at all?
Some can and some cannot — it depends entirely on the rules you are keeping. The useful question is not whether zero is possible in general, but whether it is possible for your school, and no honest answer to that exists until someone has read your actual rules.
What is better — a gap for a class, or a teacher losing their day off?
We take the students’ side by default: the class gap is closed first, and the teacher’s request is met from what remains. That is a choice, not a law, and it is the one your school should make deliberately.
Can we bring in the timetable we already have?
Yes. Write to us with the week you are running now and what it is costing you, and we will tell you what we would change and what we would leave alone.
Stop spending your summer on this.
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