Every principal knows that managing multiple administrative tasks can be a significant burden, but there are ways to minimise the chaos this creates.
By making timetabling easier and more streamlined, principals can reduce their workloads and let staff get back to teaching and learning. One service helping in this area is Edval Timetables.
Edval entered the market 20 years ago, providing timetabling software, solutions and support to schools across all states and territories, as well as Ireland, UK and Asia.
Over 700 schools and hundreds of thousands of students are currently using the timetabling service, which is helping to simply complex day-to-day administrative processes for educators.
Kurri Kurri High School implemented Edval in 2008, and one of the reasons for this was the flexibility that it provided the school’s leaders, staff and students.
The school’s principal, Tracey Breese, told The Educator that efficient timetabling was “fundamental to the structure and running of her school” and that she has noticed vast improvements since bringing it on board.
“Without a good timetable structure, and without flexibility in that structure, schools can become very constricted by what they can offer,” she said.
“In a time of change and shift around student choice, the capacity to timetable – and shift the way we timetable – can be really constricting. However, Edval helps us overcome this on multiple levels.”
Breese said that by using Edval Daily, she has improved her schools’ daily organisation, allowing for savings which make the cost of the software cost-neutral.
“Edval Daily is being printed and processed across the school so that everyone is aware of where each teacher is, as well as the cover that is required for their classes,” she said.
“This makes the flow and management of the mornings a lot easier than pen and paper, and trying to plug holes with a number of casuals.”
Breese added that the service has also helped her school save money.
“You can also save a lot of money with Edval, because it will help you to manage the number of periods you’re using across the day and limiting the number of casuals you need, because it cleverly helps you to manage plugging those holes across the timetable,” she said.
Cutting out the middle man
Breese said she recently employed a business manager who is attending to the administrative side of schooling, allowing staff to get back to teaching and learning.
“The business manager does not necessarily have any idea about the landscape of running a school, so that person has come in to take over calling casuals, because it is an administrative role that doesn’t need a teacher to support it,” she explained.
“The structure of Edval allows that person with admin and business experience, but not necessarily teaching experience, to manage the school.
“This has allowed me, as the principal, to free up the admin of that role for my head teacher of admin and allow her to get back to teaching and learning in the classroom.”