School Scheduling System
A school scheduling system manages the weekly lesson timetable, the supervision rota and the exam calendar from one place. Keeping them in separate files is what causes teachers to be assigned a duty or an invigilation slot during a lesson — the clash appears in no single file. Apakademia runs all three on shared data, so those conflicts cannot arise.
Three schedules, one dataset
Most institutions build the lesson timetable carefully, then produce the duty rota and exam calendar as separate documents. Each document is internally correct. The conflicts live between them.
When duties are assigned from a separate file, checking whether the teacher has a lesson in that period is a manual step — and across fifty assignments, a manual step is a skipped step. The same applies to invigilator allocation during exam weeks.
Running all three on the same data removes the check rather than automating it: the information is already present when the assignment is made.
Weekly lesson timetable
Generated from teacher availability, class lesson loads, room definitions and your scheduling rules. Teacher, class and room clashes are hard constraints. Blocks keep their integrity, daily period limits are respected, and lessons are spread across the week rather than piling into one day.
Supervision rota
Duty areas and periods are defined, along with staff exempt from duty. The system distributes the load evenly and never assigns a duty during a teacher's lesson. Where teachers work across campuses, a duty is not assigned if they are teaching elsewhere that period.
Balance is measured on three axes: how many duties each teacher has, whether the same person always gets the same day, and whether demanding areas rotate.
Exam calendar
Exam sessions are scheduled with rules such as a maximum number of exams per class per day and separation of demanding subjects. Rooms are assigned with exam capacity in mind — which is typically about half the normal teaching capacity, since exam layouts seat one student per desk.
Invigilators are drawn from teachers without a lesson in that period, with the load balanced across staff. The result is presented as a matrix showing every form at once.
Different structures per level and per day
Primary, middle and secondary levels can run different period lengths and break patterns within the same institution. Days can also differ from one another — eight periods on weekdays and five on Saturdays, for example. These differences are reflected consistently in exports and shared links, not just on screen.
Roles and visibility
- Head office — all campuses on one screen, with comparative reports.
- Campus director — only their own campus.
- Teacher — their own timetable, duties and exam assignments.
- Counsellor — their own area of responsibility.
Each institution's data is held in a separate database and is never visible to another institution.
Reporting
Administrators can see teaching load distribution across staff, class occupancy, unplaced lessons with their causes, and cross-campus comparisons. All reports export to spreadsheet.
The load report is the one most often used in practice, because disputes about fairness are usually settled by measurement rather than discussion. It shows weekly totals, teaching days, peak daily load and total idle gaps per teacher.
Distribution
Each class and each teacher has a shareable link. Recipients do not log in, and the link always reflects the current version — so a revision does not need to be redistributed. PDF, spreadsheet and a dedicated print layout are available for archives and noticeboards.