Class Allocation

As the year looms or lumbers towards its end, our thoughts turn to next year.

Who will teach which set?

Who has the C/D borderline Intervention students?

Who has that one Year Group who never seem to have settled down?

Who will be looked at to obtain our A and A* grades?

I like this time of year. As a Head of Department, I have the power to allocate class to teacher!

Whilst I am a lovely and kind person and I have asked whether anyone has any preferences, I am also aware of the following:

• As a manager, I want to allocate staff in a way which utilises and exploits their skills and strengths, whether that be in classroom management, inspiring the least able, challenging the most able, teaching boys, teaching AEN, teaching lower school or upper school;

• As a manager, I personally like the idea of giving everyone one year group with whom they have no contact: a parents’ evening off, one cycle of reports that you don’t have to do, a fresh start with that year group if you pick them up in the following year;

• As a leader, I want to place staff with sets that will complement their responsibilities:

• there seems little point giving a teacher with responsibility for Key Stage 3 no Key Stage 3 teaching; it seems absurd not to put a teacher with responsibility for transition into Year 7; it would be perverse to not put a Head of Year teaching her year group;

• And as a leader, I feel a responsibility to support the development of my staff.

• Shall I put this teacher who has joined us from a middle school in Key Stage 4 so that her CV can reflect success at that level? Should I put that teacher who has never taught Literature under the new specifications into a Literature class? Have the classes given provided enough range to allow that NQT to develop his skills?

It is a little bit like playing a game of tetris: certain staff have large amounts of time allocated elsewhere for SLT, Year Head, other curriculum areas; some of the concerns and focuses I have are conflicting; and sometimes the numbers simply don’t fit!

The tool I use to perform this task is this:

 

There is a list of classes on the left with various boxes to reflect the restrictions of banding, populations etc within the school; and beside each class are spaces to fill in the initials of the teacher. The number of spaces reflects the number of lessons available per fortnight or per week. There is a list of teachers and their available lessons on the right.

As you fill teachers’ initials into the classes on the right, it automatically starts to count down the remaining available lessons; and simultaneously adds up the number of classes for which each teacher has responsibility.

I find it useful here hereby put it out into the aether to see if anyone else could use or adapt or improve it to the requirements of their own school!

The document itself (with the relevant formulae) is here:

(Anonymised) Proposed Setting Arrangements