How to Plan a Teacher's Day Off in the School Timetable

The start-of-term meeting is over. Three teachers stop you in the corridor. One wants Wednesday off to pick up a child, one wants Thursday for a master's course, and one says “any day, as long as one is free”. All three are right. But the more such requests there are, the tighter the timetable gets.

In this post we split day-off requests into two kinds: the ones that are non-negotiable and the ones that should be met if possible. Setting both up the same way is one of the most common reasons a timetable jams.

A required day off, or a preference?

A required day off: the Availability tab

If a teacher definitely can't come one day, mark that day Closed on the teacher's Availability tab. In Atlas's own words: “No lessons will ever be scheduled at these times (a hard rule).” The tab has three states: Available, Discouraged and Closed. Atlas avoids discouraged periods when it can and uses them only when there is no other option.

A closed day carries over to the duty roster too. In Atlas the days closed on a teacher's availability come into the duty rules by themselves, as days duty may never be given.

A day off as a preference: “Keep one day free for a teacher”

If the request isn't essential, use the Keep one day free for a teacher rule and choose the day to keep free. It is a preference: Atlas tries to keep lessons off that day, but relaxes it if the timetable needs it. Give the rule a Low, Medium or High priority; Atlas weighs a high-priority request far more than a low one.

Once the timetable is built, the Preference Satisfaction report shows which requests were met. So “why didn't Mr. Kaya get his day off?” is answered by the report, not by a guess.

How day-off requests squeeze the timetable

A teacher with 22 lessons a week has to fit into a four-day week. With seven periods a day that is 28 periods, so the lessons fit. But if the same teacher also has two closed mornings, the open periods shrink fast. Once open periods drop below the lessons, no timetable can be built.

Atlas sees this before building, in the pre-check, and names the teacher: “Teacher availability is insufficient”. You notice the problem the day you set up the request, not after the timetable is tried.

A day off is not the same as free periods

Before days off, most teachers complain about idle periods in the day: a lesson in the first period and the seventh, with four hours of waiting in between. That has a rule of its own: Keep a teacher's idle hours low. You set how many idle periods a day are acceptable and Atlas tries not to go over it.

Practical advice

1. Use Closed for days a teacher really can't come, and Keep one day free for a teacher for wishes.
2. After setting closed days, run the pre-check; a teacher without enough open periods shows up at once.
3. Prioritise. If every request is High, priorities stop meaning anything.
4. After building, check the Preference Satisfaction report.

How the rules work together with the rest of the timetable is in the step-by-step guide; the duty side is in the teacher duty roster.