The timetable

Who teaches what, when and where. An afternoon for a whole school, and it unlocks more than you expect.

Build this earlier than you think you need to

The timetable is not only a printed grid. It decides which subjects a teacher can enter marks for, it feeds the teacher's own view of their day, and it is what makes substitutions and free-teacher searches possible.

Schools that leave it until later discover it during exams, when teachers open marks entry and find nothing there.

Sidebar → Academics → Class Timetable

The order to do this in

Step	Screen	Why
1	Assign Subjects	A subject must belong to the class before it can be timetabled
2	Manage Periods	The daily period structure, shared by the whole school
3	Class Timetable	The grid itself, section by section
4	Assign Class Teacher	Who owns each section

Step 1 — Assign subjects to classes

Academics → Assign Subjects is a grid of classes against subjects. Tick what each class studies and save.

Saving this screen replaces the whole assignment

Each class's subject list is replaced by exactly what is ticked when you save. A subject you unticked by accident is removed, not merged. Save deliberately.

Step 2 — Define your periods

Academics → Manage Periods

Field	Notes
Name	Period 1, Lunch
Start and end time	The wall-clock times
Type	Teaching or Break

Only teaching periods appear as fillable cells in the timetable grid. Breaks are shown for context.

Get the times right, not just the order

Conflicts are detected by actual clock times, not by period number. If two periods overlap in time — because a junior and senior schedule run differently — the system correctly treats them as clashing. That only works if the times are honest.

Step 3 — Build the grid

Choose a section. You get a grid of days against teaching periods. In each cell, pick the subject, the teacher, and optionally a room number.

For subjects taught in parallel — where a class splits by option — a cell can hold an elective block instead of a single subject: several subjects running at the same time, each with its own teacher.

Save when the section is done.

What the system refuses

Before saving, each cell is checked:

Refused when	Message
The teacher is already teaching elsewhere at that time	"Mrs Rao is already teaching Grade 8 (A) at this time."
The room is already booked	"room 204 is already booked by Grade 9 (B) at this time."
The cell would break a load rule	"would put a teacher over 6 periods on Monday"

A bad cell does not lose your other work

Good cells are saved; only the problem cells are skipped, and each one is listed back to you with the day, the period and the reason. Fix those and save again — nothing else is undone.

Teacher load rules

Optionally cap how hard any one teacher can be worked:

Rule	Effect
Maximum periods per day	A teacher cannot be scheduled beyond this in a day
Maximum consecutive periods	No more than this many back-to-back

Both are counted across the teacher's whole day, in every section — not just the section you are editing. That is what makes them useful.

Leave them blank for no limit.

Step 4 — Assign class teachers

Academics → Assign Class Teacher sets who owns each section. This is separate from the class coordinator, and separate from who teaches what on the grid.

It is what drives a teacher's access to their section's attendance.

What you get once it is built

Screen	Use
Teacher View	Any teacher's full week, as they see it
Free teachers	Who is unoccupied on a given day and period — the substitution tool
Master timetable	The whole school on one page
Print	Class and teacher timetables, ready to hand out

Substitutions

When a teacher is away, record a substitution for that date: pick the absent teacher, and assign a cover teacher to each of their periods.

Combined with the free-teacher finder, covering an absence takes about a minute: find who is free in that period, assign them, done.

Substitutions are per-date and do not alter the underlying timetable.

Real example

Apex Academy, 22 sections:

1. Assign Subjects — one grid, ten minutes
2. Manage Periods — 8 teaching periods plus two breaks, typed once
3. The grid — about ten minutes per section, mostly the senior classes where the elective blocks live
4. Load rules set to 6 periods a day, 3 consecutive. The senior science teacher's Tuesday was rejected four times before somebody noticed she had been scheduled for nine periods

Their note afterwards: build the junior sections first. They are simple, they teach you the screen, and by the time you reach the electives you are fast.

Common problems

What you see	Cause
A subject is missing from the cell dropdown	It is not assigned to that class. Fix it under Assign Subjects
A teacher is missing from the dropdown	They do not have the teacher role, or no staff record
"… is already teaching … at this time"	A genuine clash, including across overlapping periods with different names
"would put a teacher over N periods"	Your load rule. Raise it, or move the period
Some cells saved and others did not	Exactly as designed — read the skipped list, it names each cell and why
"No active academic session is set"	Set a current session before editing the timetable
Teachers cannot enter marks	Almost always this: no timetable entries for them in that section
A teacher's view is empty	They have no periods in the current session's timetable
Last year's timetable is showing	Check the session indicator in the topbar