School Timetabling & Staffing: Classes, Teacher Loads, Room Use & Cover

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Turn next year's pupil numbers into classes with CEILING, work out the average class size, add up the teacher periods the curriculum needs and convert them into the teacher FTE the school must employ.
• Decide from the request counts which Year 10 electives run and with how many groups, measure how full the groups are, label each elective and count the pupils whose first choice is cancelled.
• Total each teacher's timetabled periods from a long allocation list with SUMIFS, set part-time allowances from FTE, calculate who is over or under their allowance and flag the over-loaded teachers with a rule.
• Count how many periods each room is used, compute a correctly weighted average group size, combine frequency and occupancy into a utilisation rate and highlight the rooms below target.
• Build a slot key for every lesson, count how many lessons each teacher and each room has in the same slot with COUNTIFS, and count the lessons that have any clash – without counting a double clash twice.
• Count the lessons to cover in each period, find the periods where there are more lessons than free teachers, price the supply teachers needed for the day and pick the fairest internal cover with MINIFS and XLOOKUP.
• Calculate each department's contact ratio and average class size, then the school's pupil–teacher ratio, and prove that average class size = PTR ÷ contact ratio.
• Rebuild next year's classes from the new pupil numbers, turn the curriculum into periods and FTE per department, compare them with the staff who stay, chart needed against available FTE and name the department to recruit for first.