Key takeaways
- Start from the contract or collective agreement, not from the timetable grid.
- Keep protected non-teaching time visible before teaching load is assigned.
- Use Contact Ratio to compare teaching time with available time.
- Check that the curriculum audit and staff-loading chart match.
What should be counted first?
Start with the capped workload in the contract or collective agreement. Then separate assigned teaching time from protected non-teaching time.
Do not treat regional examples as rules for every school. UK directed time, New Zealand weekly caps, and Australian workload splits show the kind of limits planners may need to model. The local agreement decides the actual cap.
What belongs in the workload baseline?
Keep the baseline short enough for leaders and department planners to check.
- The local contract or collective agreement source
- The capped total workload for each teacher group
- Protected non-teaching time that must not become teaching load
- The teaching time used in the Contact Ratio
- The available time used in the Contact Ratio
- The curriculum audit total and the staff-loading total
How do planners run the first workload pass?
Run this pass before departments treat staffing as fixed.
- Record the local workload cap and protected non-teaching entitlement.
- Calculate available time for each teacher group.
- Calculate the teaching time requested by the curriculum audit.
- Divide teaching time by available time to check Contact Ratio.
- Compare the curriculum audit with the staff-loading chart.
- Flag any mismatch before teaching load is assigned.
How should part-time caps be read?
Part-time caps and entitlements should be pro-rated where the local contract says they are pro-rated. That applies to workload caps and to protected non-teaching time.
Keep this linked to part-time teachers. A part-time availability pattern can make an otherwise valid Contact Ratio hard to place.
What should leaders confirm?
Confirmation means the workload model matches the source rules.
- Regional examples are labelled as examples
- The local workload cap is named
- Protected non-teaching time is included
- Contact Ratio uses the same available-time definition throughout
- Curriculum audit demand matches staff-loading capacity
- Any mismatch is visible before timetable placement starts
What fails if this pass is skipped?
A timetable can look placeable while the workload model is already over cap. The usual warning signs are a Contact Ratio that leaves too little protected non-teaching time, or a curriculum audit that asks for more teaching than the staff-loading chart can cover.
Run overload checks against the same cap definitions. Otherwise the later check is comparing assigned periods with the wrong baseline.
Questions planners ask about contract hours
Are workload caps the same in every country?
No. Use local contract rules. UK directed time, New Zealand non-contact entitlement, and Australian workload splits are regional examples, not universal limits.
What does Contact Ratio tell us?
It compares teaching time with available time. A high ratio leaves less room for protected non-teaching time such as PPA, management, and contingency.
Why compare the curriculum audit with staff loading?
The curriculum audit shows the teaching demand. The staff-loading chart shows the available staff capacity. They must match before allocation is credible.