What it does
In Smootables, the participants of a lesson are whoever actually attends: one group, several groups, individual students, or any mix. A placement's Participants tab holds groups and individual students side by side, and the participant summary counts them together. A student who belongs to a group but skips this particular course is marked as an exemption on that placement, without leaving the group anywhere else.
This matters most where learning paths diverge: vocational and technical colleges with workplace periods, upper-secondary schools with individual study programs, and any school where "the class" stopped being the unit of scheduling. Off-site and remote learning are modeled per placement rather than faked with dummy rooms, and the true headcount, group totals minus exemptions plus individuals, is what room capacity is checked against.
How it works in Smootables
- Open a placement's Participants tab and add student groups. Multiple groups per placement is the normal case, not a workaround; the form says "You can select multiple groups for this placement".
- Add Individual students to the same placement by search, or mark a group member as an Exemption: the product's own help text reads "Student is exempt from this study unit".
- Set delivery per placement: Remote (no room) drops the room requirement, Workplace learning (no teacher) schedules on-the-job learning without school staff or rooms, and teacher or room can stay To be decided later while you plan.
- Let group defaults carry the routine: choose group teachers and a default room once, and new placements pick them up with a "From group default" badge. Up to five rotating teachers are supported, with the least-loaded chosen first.
- Read the result per person: filter any timetable by an individual student, and use the same student filter when exporting.
Key capabilities
Groups and students, one model
Group assignments and individual student assignments live on the same placement, in the same tab, and count into the same participant total.
Per-placement exemptions
A student stays in their group but skips a specific placement. The exemption is attached to that placement, so nothing else about their schedule changes.
True headcounts
Capacity is checked against the real number in the room: group totals minus exemptions plus individually added students, per placement.
Off-site and remote, modeled
Remote lessons consume no physical room. Workplace learning needs no school teacher or room. Both are built-in delivery modes, visible as badges on the plan.
Student-specific timetables
Filter the timetable by one student to see their week, and export with the same student filter for CSV, Excel, or the print view.
Team teaching and deferred staffing
Placements carry several teachers when lessons are taught in teams, and staffing or rooms can be marked "To be decided later" so planning never waits on HR.
Where it fits
Pathways are a planning-model feature, and the rest of the product inherits them. Timetable generation reads the participant model when it validates rooms and builds the timetable, and the Planner assistant edits assignments and exemptions in plain language. If your school is vocational, the vocational timetabling guides walk through workplace periods and mixed cohorts in depth, and vocational college timetable software frames the wider evaluation.