Teacher workload, per-teacher timetables and substitute cover

Workload is a constraint, not a report

A timetable can be entirely clash-free and still be unteachable: one person with six periods on Monday and one on Thursday, another taking four classes back to back before lunch. Those are not clashes, so nothing flags them, and the school hears about it in the staff room instead.

• A weekly period cap per teacher — the engine never staffs anyone past their own ceiling, so the cap is respected at build time rather than audited afterwards.
• A limit on back-to-back periods — set how many consecutive teaching periods anyone may take, per teacher where it matters.
• Guaranteed free periods — so a teacher’s day has breathing room in it, and there is somebody available when cover is needed.
• Spread across the week — the load is distributed rather than piled onto the first two days.
• Class-teacher duties — a class teacher assigned to their own class’s first period, plus lunch and ground duties staggered across staff.
• Alternative subjects — a teacher can carry a second subject they are qualified for, which is often what makes a tight staffing plan solvable at all.

The per-teacher view, and printing it

Any teacher’s week can be opened on its own — every period they teach, every class, every room, plus their total weekly load and how it is distributed across the days. It is the view to check before a timetable is published, and the sheet to hand each teacher afterwards.

WeekWise prints a clean one-page sheet per teacher and per class, along with a subject-load ledger showing how the week was actually apportioned.

Covering an absence

When a teacher is absent, the question is never "who is free" in the abstract — it is who is free in that specific period, is not already covering something else, and can plausibly take that class. WeekWise answers it from the timetable it already holds, and assigns the cover so the arrangement is recorded rather than shouted down a corridor.

Gap cover works the same way for the holes a timetable leaves behind — periods with no assigned teacher get filled from staff who are genuinely available, instead of leaving a class unsupervised on paper.

Swaps are the other half of this. Any two periods can be exchanged with a live clash check that tells you what the swap would break before you commit, and a chain of dependent swaps is shown as a chain rather than as one change that quietly moves four others. See the full feature list →