Key takeaways
- Compare assigned periods against the contractual cap and the contact-ratio budget.
- Run the check before placement; after placement it becomes a rebuild.
- Include per-day and consecutive-period limits where local agreements set them.
- Rebalance through the curriculum-audit-to-staff-loading match, not by shaving individuals.
Two ceilings, one check
The contractual cap is the legal ceiling: directed-time budgets or their local equivalent. The contact ratio is the structural one: how much of a teacher's available time teaching may consume before planning, management, and contingency get squeezed. A load can clear the first and breach the second, which is why the check compares against both.
Where local agreements add per-day or consecutive-period limits, they join the checklist; they are jurisdictional, so read them from the agreement rather than assuming them.
Run the check before placement
The output is a rebalancing list, produced while rebalancing is still cheap.
- Take the workload baseline: caps and contact-ratio budgets per teacher, pro-rated where needed.
- Total the assigned periods per teacher from the staffing plan.
- Flag everyone over either ceiling, and by how much.
- Check per-day and consecutive-period limits where your agreement defines them.
- Rebalance through the curriculum-audit-to-staff-loading match: move classes, not minutes.
- Re-run after every staffing change until placement starts with a clean list.
How to do this in Smootables: the over-limit warning
Fall 2026
Recurring weeks18.8.2026 - 20.12.2026 / 18 weeks
Timeline
Teacher workload
2 teachers over weekly limit · 1 placement to be decided later
The planning header carries the audit permanently: Teacher Workload: All OK, or an amber count of teachers over limit. The panel behind it shows each teacher's assigned against maximum hours, per period and across the year, with over-limit cells highlighted; cross-campus load counts into the same totals. Because the numbers come from planning placements, the warning fires before any timetable exists, which is exactly when this guide's check belongs.
The weekly cap is also enforced at generation time: a teacher over weekly maximum hours is a typed validation error before the solver runs. Day-level balance is a soft preference (Teacher Daily Balance, weighted 0 to 200) rather than a hard cap, so where a local agreement sets per-day or consecutive limits, keep those in the planner's audit.
Rebalance at the right altitude
Overload is rarely one teacher's problem. It is usually the curriculum audit asking for more teaching than the staff-loading chart can cover, localised onto whoever was staffed last. Rebalancing at the individual level (shave a period here, a duty there) treats the symptom; rebalancing the audit-to-loading match treats the cause.
How the balance lands across the department once caps are respected is the next question: fair distribution. The check's place in the wider handoff into timetabling is covered in timetabling handoff, and the recipe for daily caps specifically is capping teacher lessons per day.
Questions planners ask about overload checks
Is an over-cap teacher always a planning mistake?
It is always a finding. Sometimes the plan is wrong, sometimes the cap data is stale, and sometimes leadership knowingly accepts a temporary excess. The check's job is to make the state visible early enough that whichever of those it is, it is a decision.
A timetable generated without errors; can overload still exist?
Yes, on any dimension the generator does not enforce. Policy limits that live in agreements rather than in the solver's rules stay the planner's audit. Solver-feasible and policy-acceptable are different tests.
How do part-time and team teaching change the numbers?
Part-time caps are pro-rated before comparing, and team-taught classes follow the local accounting rule (one sourced agreement divides average class size by the number of teachers). Skip either adjustment and the check reports fiction.