Key takeaways
- Governance is staged sign-off with named owners, not a freeze ceremony.
- The gate: the model goes to leadership for agreement before construction begins.
- The options window is time-boxed; about two weeks is the sourced typical allowance.
- Changes after sign-off are accepted but priced: rework, up to a partial re-write.
The owners
The sourced pattern gives each stage a name. Titles vary; the split does not.
- Heads of department: propose structures and staffing preferences, sense-check drafts
- The timetabler or planner: models proposals and their interactions
- Senior leadership or the head: signs off the model before construction
- MIS administration: holds the record the school operates from
- Exam officer or equivalent: owns the exam windows the calendar maps
- A named owner for each post-sign-off change and its rework
The cycle's gates
Dates go on gates, not on wishes.
- Set the calendar and derive the trusted week count.
- Open the options window, time-boxed at roughly two weeks.
- Tally choices, and arrange the option pattern with its satisfaction rate.
- Run the staffing model until the audit and loading chart match.
- Take the model to leadership: this agreement is the construction gate.
- Log post-agreement changes with owner and rework cost.
Sign-off that means something
A sign-off is real when the signer sees the trade-offs: the satisfaction rate next to the option pattern, the contact ratio next to the staffing plan, the named risks next to the reassurances. Approving a curriculum model without its costs is not governance; it is ceremony with better fonts.
Staged matters too. The calendar gates the structure, the structure gates the staffing, the staffing gates the handoff. Each stage can only falsify the ones after it, which is why the order is not negotiable.
Change control without theatre
Changes after the gate are normal: a resignation, a demand surge, an exam-board surprise. The honest mechanism is a log that records what changed, who owns it, and what it cost in rework. That log does two jobs: it keeps the current cycle truthful, and it teaches the next one where slack was actually needed.
When the change lands in people rather than structures, the communication side is covered in rolling out to staff; the cycle's wider commercial context sits on school year planning.
Questions planners ask about governance
What belongs to the head of department versus the timetabler?
The sourced split: heads of department propose and sense-check (structures, staffing preferences, option content); the timetabler models what those proposals cost and whether they fit together. Neither owns the other's half, which is what makes the sign-off meeting a real gate.
How do we handle the change that arrives after sign-off?
Accept it and price it. The sourced practice treats post-agreement changes as legitimate but costly, up to a partial re-write. What kills cycles is not the change; it is pretending the change was free, so the next one arrives with the same casualness.
Why time-box the options window?
Because everything after it waits on the tally: the pattern cannot be arranged, priced, or staffed until choices are in. The sourced typical window is about two weeks; longer windows delay the pattern work without measurably improving the choices.