When doing the timetable in school there can sometimes be the tendency to focus heavily on ‘what’ students are doing (the model) and maybe not as much on the ‘who’ is teaching them (classes/ resources). Research from Burgess, Rawal and Taylor (2020) which is discussed in this TES article suggests that lower-ability students gained more from having highly-effective teachers than higher ability students. Everyone gains from having a more effective teacher, but the gain is greater for low-ability students than for higher ability students.
With this in mind then, timetablers should be taking this into account when developing the timetable. When HoDs give back their requests for which staff teach which class, the timetabler should push back on staffing that doesn’t take this research into account. Most timetablers will know the staff in the school and who may be more effective than others, so should therefore have this knowledge to push back with.
It is also good to challenge other staffing resources that HoDs might be requesting;
- Unbalanced Key Stage spread
- Staff who are assigned to only exam classes. How are newer/ less experienced staff meant to develop if they are not given the opportunity?
- Has the HoD or another staff member got all the ‘set 1 classes’?
- Alternatively has someone got all the ‘bottom set classes’?
So when constructing and resourcing the timetable think about this research and maybe allocate staff accordingly.