Keeping On Track with Tes Timetable

Modified on Thu, 14 Aug at 12:43 AM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

After Your First Tes Timetable Training Day, D1
After Your Second Tes Timetable Training Day, D2
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Preamble

This document aims to guide you through creating your first (or as a reminder when creating your second) timetable with Tes Timetable within the usual time frame. It includes the steps for preparing your file through to completing your timetable, and the various tasks that need to happen afterwards.

There is also a Checklist document that you may print which allows you to tick off your completed tasks, starting from the rollover process for the next year’s timetable. This is the same information and steps shown in the Tes Timetabling Workflow document. This document can also be found in your Effective Timetabling Handbook, as given to you at D1.

After Your First Tes Timetable Training Day, D1

1. Edit and amend your own school file with regard to:

Setup of days and periods, such as adding in before and after school periods if necessary, and Assembly or different days. You may want to check/confer with an Tes Timetable consultant if you have trouble deciding how to set up your ‘different’ days
Bell times
Teacher names, codes and faculties
Subject teacher sets . . . combining where possible, and adding all the teachers who are capable of teaching each course. Your imported file only contains the names of the teachers who are assigned this year, so it is important part of your collecting the school knowledge that you do this. It may be necessary to ask your Heads of Department for help in this. You can also use the Reports > Faculty request form in Tes Timetable to help you collect this information.
Room data and sizes, and which are specialist rooms.
Subject room sets . . . combining where possible, but also keeping separate any course that have specific requests for different years. Your imported file assigns every room that has even one lesson into a faculty, so deleting is an important aspect of this job. Again, collecting the information from your Heads of Department will probably be needed.
Check for any misinterpretations in Tes Timetable's deduction of the naming of subjects.
Check that all classes are correctly assigned to the right faculty.
Support year and/or classes.
Unavailability of part time staff.
Add in Staff allowances

After Your Second Tes Timetable Training Day, D2

2. Rollover to a new year – before you start the elective lines generation for next year’s timetable

June

3. If any changes to your previous timetable structure have been raised, these need to be finalised and approved by the school Executive

July

4. If you did not sign up for Choice when the school made the decision to go ahead with Tes Timetable we recommend that you re-consider how you collect student preferences at this point

5. Complete course table for elective lines.

6. Collect student preferences.

7. Determine your elective lines

August

8. Create classes from elective lines to become the new Classes screen. In NSW, this may be Yr 9 and 11 only. In VIC this may be Years 12, 11, 10 and 9 and in other regions, this may be less or more.

September

9. Determine how the structure of your timetable needs to be entered into Tes Timetable with particular attention to:

Lines and consistent period requests (Double/NoDouble, etc).
Any necessary hard coded periods for Sport, Assembly, Roll call, Hospitality doubles, etc.
Floating class structure that supports half blocks if necessary.
Vertically linked classes: between year groups, for accelerated students; for semester courses, or groups of classes for teacher swapping midyear or more often (eg LOTE or TAS).
Letter and number group classes.
Smaller prac classes and using Mix groups rules in the Class data screen.

10. Re-check all rooming requirements in the Subject room sets screens, although these should be finalised earlier.

11. Set up umbrella classes for separate rooming requirements (eg PDHPE) if required.

October

12. Check preferred staffing on Yr 12 classes.

13. Check the unavailability of part time teachers is not hard coded more than necessary.

14. Check Subject teacher sets for all years.

15. Add preferred teachers to your classes screen where definitely requested.

16. Preview Year structure by performing Control-L for each year in your Classes screens.

17. Make any needed amendments as indicated by the above process.

18. Edit the teachers listed in the Homeroom column in Room data.

19, Book into a D3 training day if you haven't already.

November

20. Complete your class lists.

21. Check the validity of your requirements by pressing Control-Q on your file.

22. Make any needed amendments as indicated by this process, and continue with this until you reach the Champagne bottle.
23. During this process you will have added your staffing in the F4 screen. At this stage, this process is to make sure that you have enough teacher load for all your classes, and this would usually be 24. indicated by a result that gives unstaffed classes. If you have classes that were left unassigned or some with fallback teachers assigned, you need to review your Subject teacher sets and make some changes / additions.

24. Check the flexibility of your requirements by looking at the reports under the Grid menu. These are the known issues that will hinder you achieving a good timetable solution.
25. Use the information in the Requirements clash matrix to reconsider staffing or structures before attempting to start your timetable.

26. Start constructing your timetable.

27. Send a draft timetable for Yr 12-9 to interested others for feedback.

28. Add all years to your timetable and receive some feedback

December

29. Complete timetable

30. Share timetable for feedback.

31. Room your completed timetable.

32. Share timetable with HT and obtain feedback about rooming.

33. Make changes to your rooming requirements.

34. Re-do the rooming.

35. Finalise your class lists for all years.

36. Complete your study classes for senior years.

37. Add your playground duties.

38. Add meetings, On Calls, etc.

39. Publish