Are Elective Lines Driving your Timetable?

Are your elective lines like the proverbial big yellow school bus, taking all your students on the same tired old journey? Perhaps it is time to change the ageing school bus for a fleet of modern, fuel efficient, smaller electric vehicles. Drive your resources better, as you take students in new and innovative directions on theireducational journey.

It was easy when all students used the bus. There was one driver and one simple route with few decisions. Now, students expect to be offered many different subjects, which must all ‘fit’ the timetable, and students themselves are increasingly taking on the role of ‘driver’ in their own education.

Coordinating a school bus is easy, but coordinating a fleet of individual students, all going different ways, is less so. A key challenge is managing limited resources to best cater to all requests – both within budget and within ‘the timetable’. Just because you can afford to ‘run’ a class does not mean all students can actually get to this class on time, due to timetable ‘traffic congestion’. Education scheduling is an art. Any decision catering to one student may disadvantage others. The old “You can’t have your cake and eat it” proverb may often be true when managing electives..