Facilitating the generation of timetables for schools
Problem
Generating timetables in schools is very tedious work, especially when timetables need to satisfy a set of complex conditions beyond just avoiding double booking classes, students and venues. What’s more, with the ongoing implementation of Full Subject-Based Banding, students have the option to take subjects at different aptitude levels. That means that students in the same form class may be taking different subject combinations at various aptitudes and timetables need to be highly personalised.
Prior to School Timetable Application (STA), MOE timetabling software had to be installed on local devices. Each generation of a single timetable takes up all the device’s computational power, preventing the teacher from doing any other work. Teachers could not collaborate and share the load of setting up the timetable too.
Relying on existing commercial timetabling software is not sustainable as they are costly to maintain on a yearly basis.
Solution
STA is an integrated suite of timetabling applications, comprising the timetable generator, the relief planner and the timetable exporter.
Our timetable generator is cloud-based, enabling teachers to work collaboratively to input data.
Our relief planner allows the relief team to immediately identify all the lessons that an absent teacher would miss while quickly finding a list of teachers who are available to take over the affected lessons.
Our timetable exporter, the newest function we are currently developing, creates personalised copies of student timetables, for ease of use by both students and teachers.
Testing our prototype with teachers from the timetabling team
Teachers can have an overview of their school timetable via the app to assist them in their planning
Teachers can quickly key in their data into our application and reuse it over multiple permutations of timetable generation
Impact
>14, 000
timetables generated
124
active schools using
“I sincerely thank the team in charge of STA for being so receptive and patient. The work being done in such a short period of time is tremendous in order to bring about the many improvements since June 2018. Thank you very much.”
- Mr Loh, teacher from Catholic High School (Primary)
“I can see that STA is constantly upgrading its functions and features to better serve the users. Data entry is easier as compared to other commercial applications. Solution generation has also improved from the first time that my school used the application.”
- Mr Wu, teacher from Chung Cheng High School (Main)