Timetable Daily: Teacher swap

Modified on Thu, 14 Aug at 12:59 AM

Occasionally there is the need to cover a class with a teacher who is unavailable, due to the preferred teacher already teaching a class at that time.

This requires the use of the 'Teacher swap' feature.

There are two scenarios that would warrant using the Teacher swap feature:

Scenario 1:

The class you wish to give to an unavailable teacher displays in the Covers page.
For example:

Period 2: Tim Burke is teaching Year 11 Chemistry.
Period 2: Catherine Parker is teaching Year 9 Science.
Tim Burke is absent. Instead of putting a casual relief teacher or a covering teacher on the 11 Chemistry class, it may be preferable to have Catherine Parker take the 11 Chemistry class, and give her Year 9 science class to the casual relief teacher or covering teacher.

Scenario 2:

The class you wish to give to an unavailable teacher does not display in the Covers page.

For example:

Period 2: Emily Chang is teaching Year 11 Biology.
Period 2: Dennis Hall is teaching Year 7B Science.
No teachers are absent or on an event, so neither of these classes appear on the Covers page, but you want these teachers to swap classes for this particular lesson: Dennis Hall will take Year 11 Biology, and Emily Chang will take Year 8 Science.

Generating a Teacher Swap

Scenario 1:

Go to the Home screen (Covers page)
Click on the class requiring cover to bring up the Alternatives box

Select the Unavailable tab to view all teachers unavailable at that time or alternatively, use the 'Teacher' filter to find the desired teacher, in this case, Catherine Parker.
Select the desired teacher. In the image above, the preferred teacher, Catherine Parker, is unavailable as she is teaching her Year 9 class.
When an unavailable teacher is selected for a cover, the following dialog appears:
Select 'Create teacher swap and cover original lesson' and then click 'Submit'.

This action will result in the following:

The selected teacher, Catherine Parker will be placed on the 11 Chemistry cover.
Catherine Parker's original class will now appear on the Covers page, requiring a replacement teacher.
Catherine Parker will appear in the Absences tab, with absence reason ‘Teacher swap’ for this session.

Scenario 2:

When the classes requiring the swapping of teachers do not appear in the Covers page, we must manually create the Teacher swap.

Go to the Absences tab
Create an absence. In this case, we will create the absence for Dennis Hall for Period 1 only
Select 'Teacher swap' as the absence reason

The class that needs the new teacher now appears on the Covers page, and can be assigned to Emily Chang as required. Once again, select 'Create teacher swap and cover original lesson' and then click 'Submit'.
Both teachers will now appear on the covers page with their classes covered by each other.

They will also appear in the absence table with a reason of 'Teacher Swap'.

NOTE: Teachers who are made absent using the 'Teacher swap' absence reason ARE available to cover classes, including their own, in the period they are marked 'absent'. This is because the 'Teacher swap' reason is not considered to be a real absence. If they are not assigned a cover in the period that they are 'absent' but are assigned a cover in another period, that cover will not be classed as a Teacher swap cover. It will be an extra or an underload, depending on the tab from which the teacher is selected.