Constraint recipe
A daily cap limits how many periods one teacher teaches on a single day. Weekly hours can look legal while Tuesday is still unreasonably heavy. Count each teacher's assigned periods per day against your policy cap. If many teachers exceed it, you may have a staffing or curriculum problem, not only a scheduling one.
Key takeaways
- Daily caps control concentration, not total weekly obligation.
- Count periods per teacher per day before blaming the generator.
- Weekly overload makes daily caps impossible to meet.
- Review gaps and consecutive lessons when you move load across days.
What a daily cap actually controls
A teacher might teach 18 periods per week within contract but still face six on Monday. The daily cap targets that shape. It does not replace weekly hour checks or contact-ratio planning.
Mark the cap **hard** only if policy never allows an exception. Many schools keep it **soft** so the timetable can show where the cap breaks and why.
When a daily cap exposes a bigger problem
If assigned teaching already exceeds what fits into the teacher's working days, lowering the daily cap will not help. The same is true when specialist rooms or team-taught lessons can only run on certain days.
Use teacher workload checks to separate a true overload from a scheduling pattern you can still reshape.
What to do next
- Build a table of each teacher's periods per day and compare it to the policy cap.
- Subtract unavailable periods and non-working days before judging the cap.
- Mark the cap as mandatory, firm, or preferred in your constraint set.
- List lessons on days that exceed the cap and note what pins them there.
- Rebalance staffing, split team-taught lessons, or move curriculum demand if needed.
- Regenerate and review daily load together with gaps and consecutive periods.
Common mistakes
- Using a daily cap to hide weekly hours that already exceed contract limits
- Applying the same cap to part-time staff without pro-rata adjustment
- Moving lessons to another day without checking room and class clashes there
Quick answers
Should a daily lesson cap be hard?
Only if policy must never be broken. Many schools keep daily caps as firm or soft targets so exceptions stay visible.
What should I check before lowering the cap?
Weekly hours, part-time working days, double periods, specialist rooms, and whether the curriculum assigns too many lessons to too few staff.