Key takeaways
- Every fixed day off removes placement options for the teacher and every shared class.
- Too many staff on the same day off can make the timetable impossible on its own.
- Pro-rate caps and entitlements; give equal access to meetings and development on working days.
- Check day-off concentration before generation, not after the solver reports infeasibility.
The part-time record
Fair placement starts with a complete record per part-time teacher.
- Working days and the fixed days off
- Pro-rated cap and non-contact entitlement
- Classes shared with other teachers, and those teachers' patterns
- Constraints that follow the pattern: meetings, duties, development on working days
- Known collision points: days many staff request off
- The agreement or approval each pattern rests on
The feasibility check
Run it when patterns are requested, not after the solver fails.
- Map every part-time pattern onto the teaching week.
- Count staff unavailable per weekday; flag days where the count spikes.
- For each teaching team with a part-timer, compute the common available time.
- Flag teams whose common time is close to their required hours.
- Escalate collisions to leadership with the evidence, before patterns are confirmed.
- Re-run the check when any pattern changes; one change moves every intersection.
How to do this in Smootables: availability as rules
When this resource can’t be scheduled
J. Rivera · Availability rules apply school-wide across campuses.
Dates when unavailable (full day)
In-day time settings (repeating weekly)
Part-time patterns are entered once, as availability rules on the teacher, under the heading that states the model plainly: when this resource can't be scheduled. A repeating weekly rule (Add in-day time rule) covers the standing pattern, like every Friday or every morning before 10:00; one-off absences take a full-day date block (Add full-day block). Rules apply school-wide across campuses.
The solver schedules around these rules, and validation flags a pinned lesson that lands in someone's blocked time before a run starts. The workload panel then audits the pro-rated caps you set on the teacher record, so the hour side and the availability side of the same contract are checked in the same place.
Fairness follows the pattern
Part-time fairness is mostly calendar fairness: pro-rated caps honoured, and meetings, development, and duties scheduled on days the teacher actually works. A pattern that quietly excludes someone from every department meeting is a fairness failure the timetable created.
When the same part-time clash keeps returning during generation, treat it as a structural signal rather than a placement bug; resolving timetable conflicts covers the escalation, and the recipe walkthrough is part-time teacher day limits.
Questions planners ask about part-time timetabling
How much part-time staffing is too much?
There is no fixed threshold, and the sourced range is wide: trial schools ran 10% to 43% part-time, with some reporting acute strain between about 32% and 50%. What matters locally is concentration: five part-timers with spread patterns can be easier than three who all want Friday.
Can we just deny day-off requests until the timetable works?
That is a staffing policy question before a timetabling one. What planning owes the decision is evidence: which patterns collide, which classes lose their common time, and what the trade-offs are. The decision itself belongs to leadership.
Why does a legal part-time load still fail to place?
Because the cap counts hours and availability decides which slots exist. A load inside the pro-rated cap can still be unplaceable when the available days are too narrow for the classes it contains.