How to timetable part-time and flexible-working teachers

Flexible working helps schools keep good teachers. But for whoever builds the timetable, every part-time pattern is a constraint. Research by the NFER for the Department for Education found that around two-thirds of secondary senior leaders saw the complexity of timetabling as the most significant barrier to agreeing part-time or flexible working requests.

That barrier is real, but it's smaller than it looks if you plan for it. Here's how.

Collect requests early, in one go

Ask every teacher who wants to change their working pattern to tell you by a fixed date, ideally early in the spring term. Timetablers often compare part-time teachers to the edge pieces of a jigsaw: you place them first, so you need them in hand before you start.

When you collect requests, ask:

• Which times are fixed, such as childcare or another job, and which are preferences
• Whether they prefer whole days, part days or a mix
• How flexible they could be if their first preference doesn't fit

The difference between fixed and preferred matters most. A fixed commitment is a hard constraint. A preference is a soft one, and treating every preference as fixed is the fastest way to an impossible timetable. (See hard and soft constraints.)

Avoid everyone having the same day off

If most part-time staff take Friday off, everyone else teaches a very full Friday. There's no slack for cover, and lessons that need a specialist may have nobody to teach them.

When you look at all the requests together, check how they spread across the week. A small change, like one teacher moving their day off from Friday to Thursday, can make the whole timetable easier.

Consider part days instead of whole days

A whole day off is the obvious pattern, but it's not the only one. Two mornings or two afternoons off can be easier to fit, because the timetable has more ways to arrange the remaining lessons. Ask whether a part-day pattern would work as well for the teacher.

Protect continuity for classes

The main worry with part-time staff is students seeing too many teachers. A few ways to limit it:

• Give a class to one teacher where possible. Splitting a class is sometimes unavoidable, but don't make it the default.
• When a class is shared, keep it to two teachers and give them handover time.
• Plan who teaches exam groups first, then fit shared classes around them.

Model it before you agree it

The hardest part of a flexible working request is knowing whether it will fit before you say yes. The NFER suggests being systematic: collect requests each year, check them against the timetable and staffing forecasts, then negotiate.

Timetabling software makes the checking much faster. Instead of guessing, you can build a version of the timetable that includes the request and see whether it works.

How Timez helps

Timez treats staff availability as a hard constraint, so a part-time teacher is never timetabled when they're not in. It also works to reduce gaps in teachers' days, so part-time staff aren't left with a single lesson stranded in an otherwise empty day.

Because each project keeps its own data and settings, you can try a flexible working request in a separate project, with the teacher's new availability, and see the effect on students, rooms and other staff before you decide.

Checklist

• One deadline for working-pattern requests, early in the year
• Fixed commitments separated from preferences
• Days off spread across the week
• Part-day patterns considered
• Shared classes limited and given handover time
• Requests modelled before they're agreed

For where staffing fits into the wider process, see from curriculum plan to staffing plan.