Guide
The yard duty roster: covered, fair, and out of the staffroom conversation.
A yard duty roster puts a named staff member on every supervised zone for every break, every day, and spreads that load fairly across the term. Nobody notices a good one. Everybody notices an unfair one. This guide covers coverage, fairness counting, part-timer loading, and the wet-day plan: the four things that decide whether your roster lasts the term.
Updated 20 August 20268 min read
Key takeaways
- A duty roster has two jobs: every zone covered every break (safety), and the load spread fairly across the term (trust). Most rosters fail the second job.
- Fairness must be counted across the whole term, not judged week by week, and it must count duties actually done, including swaps and cover.
- Part-timers need pro-rata duty on the days they attend. Fixed recurring duties and role-based exemptions need written rules.
- The wet day plan is part of the roster. Every outdoor zone must map to an indoor post before the rain arrives.
What a duty roster is for
Yard duty (playground duty in NSW) is a child-safety system first and a workload system second. The first job is absolute: every zone covered, every break, every day, including the oval nobody can see from the office and the ten minutes before the first bell. The second job decides whether the roster causes grievances. Staff notice unfairness quickly and precisely.
Design for both from the start. A roster that achieves coverage by quietly overloading the same six agreeable people is not a roster. It is a slow drain on goodwill that shows up months later as a morale problem.
Map the zones and breaks before the names
Start from supervision needs, not staff availability: which areas need eyes during which windows, at what ratio, given your grounds and your students. Before school, recess, lunch (often split into eating and play), after school, and bus duty each have their own shape. Some zones need two adults. Some need an adult with first-aid or fixed-equipment knowledge.
Write the zone map down formally. When a duty is missed, "I did not know the far oval was mine" is a systems failure, not a person failure. It is prevented with a clear map, clear handover times, and duties printed on each teacher's own timetable rather than on a laminated sheet in the staffroom.
Fairness is arithmetic
The only defensible measure of fairness is a running count per person across the term: duties assigned, duties actually done, and duties picked up from other people's absences. Judging week by week hides imbalance, because the person who "just this once" covered a Friday lunch duty four separate times looks fine on any single week.
Set the loading rules explicitly and publish them: how full-time load is calculated, how part-time load is pro-rated, which roles carry reduced or zero load (principal class, staff with negotiated arrangements), and how desirable and undesirable slots are balanced. Friday afternoon duty and Monday-before-school duty are not the same duty, and staff know it.
Then track against the rules. When someone says the roster is unfair, the answer should be a count you can show them.
Part-timers, fixed duties and exemptions
Part-time staff take pro-rata duty on the days they attend. That sounds obvious until a roster (human or software) spreads duties evenly across a week that includes their days off. Their available days then carry proportionally more duty, which is correct, and worth explaining before someone reads their Tuesday as punishment.
Fixed recurring duties (the teacher who always takes the bus gate because they park there, the assistant principal who covers the front office window) are fine, but they need to be recorded as fixed and counted in that person's load. The same goes for exemptions. Every school has unwritten exemptions. The roster only stays defensible when they are written down as rules that a new daily organiser can apply.
The wet day plan is part of the roster
Rain turns an outdoor supervision problem into an indoor one with different geography: classrooms and corridors instead of zones, different ratios, different sight-lines. If the wet-day roster is improvised at 12:40 under a grey sky, the same reliable people get grabbed every time, so the unfairness returns, now with added chaos.
Build the wet-day mapping in advance. Each outdoor duty converts to a defined indoor post, and the conversion is one decision ("the wet day timetable is on"), not forty. The fairness count should keep running through wet days, because indoor duty is still duty.
Absences: the daily test
Every staff absence can break the duty roster, and this is where rosters quietly rot. The absent teacher's duty is handed to whoever is standing nearest, the swap is never recorded, and by week eight the official roster and reality have drifted apart.
Reassigning duties belongs in the same morning routine as arranging class cover. When cover is arranged for an absent teacher, their duties should appear in the same view, be reassigned deliberately (ideally to whoever is furthest under their fair share), and be recorded so the count stays true.
How Bell Path handles it
Bell Path generates yard duty rosters from your real zone map and bell times, with a year-to-date fairness count per staff member, pro-rata handling for part-timers, written fixed-duty and exemption rules, and lunchtime club commitments respected. Wet day plans convert outdoor posts to indoor supervision on the same screen, and daily cover reassigns an absent teacher's duties alongside their classes, so the roster on the wall and the roster in reality stay the same document.
Common questions
- How do you make a yard duty roster fair?
- Define the loading rules explicitly (full-time load, pro-rata for part-timers, role-based reductions), balance desirable and undesirable slots, and keep a running per-person count across the term of duties assigned and actually done, including swaps and absence cover. Fairness that is not counted is luck.
- Should part-time teachers do yard duty?
- Yes, pro-rata, on the days they attend. Their duty is concentrated on fewer days, so their rostered days can look heavier than a full-timer's. That is correct and worth explaining up front.
- What happens to yard duty when a teacher is absent?
- Their duties need to be reassigned as part of the same morning process that arranges class cover, recorded, and ideally given to staff furthest under their fair share. Informal "can you just grab the oval" handoffs are how rosters and reality drift apart.
- Is a yard duty roster template enough?
- A template solves week one. It does not track fairness across a term, absorb absences, handle part-timer pro-rata, or convert to a wet-day plan. Schools with simple grounds and stable staffing can run on a template. Schools with more complexity end up wanting the roster connected to the timetable and daily cover.
Free resources
In Bell Path
A duty roster that keeps count
Bell Path rosters yard duty with a year-to-date fairness count, wet-day conversion, and absence handling in the same morning routine as daily cover.
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How to build a primary school timetable, step by step.
To build a primary school timetable, collect every staffing fact first, place planning time and specialist rotations before anything else, then check each teacher's week before staff see it. The order you make decisions in matters more than the tool you use. This guide walks through the order experienced timetablers follow, and the mistakes that cause a rebuild halfway through the term.
Yard duty roster software
Bell Path builds the yard duty roster and shows you every unfilled duty before the week is printed, stops one teacher being booked on two zones at once, and keeps a record of who was on duty. The fairness ledger sits right beside it, in hours and in counts, for the whole year.
Wet day plan software
When it rains, Bell Path takes the teachers already on yard duty and gives each one an indoor zone. The wet day plan prints from the same page as the normal roster.