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Teacher workload
Balance contract hours, part-time staff, overload checks, team teaching, and fair distribution.
Juho Isola, Smootables founder
How do schools prevent timetable generation from silently overloading teachers? Contract hours, preparation time, team-teaching splits, and part-time availability must be modeled before the solver assigns lessons. Union agreements and local policies often exceed what Excel formulas can reliably enforce.
These guides explain workload rules planners configure in Smootables: hard caps, soft targets, fair distribution across departments, and checks that surface overload before publication. They help leadership answer whether a draft timetable is equitable, not just feasible.
These guides cover planner process and decisions, not a Smootables product comparison. To evaluate capabilities, see teacher workload planning software.
Guides in this topic
Select a guide below for process-focused depth on each step.
Contract hours
Translate employment contracts into schedulable and non-schedulable time. Covers teaching load, meetings, and duties that count against weekly limits.
Read guide →Part-time teachers
Model reduced availability and preferred days without breaking solver feasibility. Explains patterns for job-share and fractional contracts.
Read guide →Overload checks
Run validation that flags teachers above contract limits before sign-off. Shows difference between solver-feasible and policy-acceptable timetables.
Read guide →Team teaching
Split sessions across co-teachers while keeping individual workload accurate. Includes paired assignments and rotating lead-teacher models.
Read guide →Fair distribution
Balance early starts, last periods, and preparation gaps across a department. Soft constraints that improve equity without blocking generation.
Read guide →
Related product pages
- Teacher workload planning before timetablingPlan teacher hours, contracts, availability, and staffing pressure before timetable generation, so overloads can be addressed while courses and resources are still being assigned.
- School year planning softwareA planning workspace to model academic years, terms, courses, groups, teachers, rooms, and equipment before automatic timetable generation begins.
See how Smootables fits your school
Book a walkthrough and we will map Smootables to your planning, workload, and timetabling process.