School timetable generator
A school timetable generator that checks the week before staff see it.
Bell Path builds a primary school timetable from the details you give it: staff, classes, part-time days, planning time, meetings and rooms. It then checks the result and shows you what it could and could not fit.
Checked before publishing
Term 2 sample · refined
19
Classes
47
Staff
446
Sessions placed
84
Planning sessions
Every classroom teacher gets their planning time
22 of 22
No teacher or room double-booked
446 checked
Yard duty rostered from the same week
29 rosters
Fictitious school · real Bell Path output
What you are looking for
You want the whole week built, then checked before anyone sees it.
Filling a grid is the easy half. The harder half is checking it: every teacher has their planning time, every part-timer is on a day they work, and no room is booked twice.
The hard part of a school timetable is keeping everything true at once: part-time days, job-shares, specialist rotations, meetings, room limits and planning time. Miss one and staff stop trusting the whole grid.
With Bell Path you describe the school in plain-language steps. It builds the timetable, checks it against everything you entered, and shows you what it could not fit. You can save versions, compare them, and publish teacher and class views when you are ready.
The problems
What goes wrong without it.
School leaders describe these problems to us before they start with Bell Path. It is built to stop each one.
One staffing change means rebuilding the whole week and sending another "please ignore the last version" email.
Important agreements live in your head or in side notes instead of in the system.
The timetable looks finished but still hides a clash, a missed planning session, or an unfair spread of work.
What it does
From school setup to a timetable you can explain with confidence.
What it handles
- Part-time teachers, job-shares, and specialists who also teach a class
- Planning time, meetings, room limits, and fixed school events
- A check of every rule before you publish, with each problem named
- Weekly or fortnightly timetables: a subject or meeting can run in Week A, Week B or both, and planning time is checked in both weeks
- Saved versions, so you can compare drafts and go back
- Printable and emailed timetables for teachers and classes, Week A pages then Week B pages when the school runs a fortnight
- Daily cover and yard duty built from the same timetable
Why schools choose Bell Path
- Built for primary schools, where part-timers and specialists are the normal case
- Shows you what it could not fit instead of hiding it
- Every setting is recorded, so the next leader can see how the timetable was built
- Setup is in plain language, so you never need to think like a programmer
Related stories
Stories from schools like yours.
Each story is built from the patterns schools describe to us. Names and identifying details are left out.
Three job-share pairs and one specialist who also taught a class.
The assistant principal was holding the job-share and specialist arrangements in spreadsheets and her own memory. She entered them into Bell Path once, then reviewed one timetable instead of four drafts.
A timetable the assistant principal could defend before term started.
Every time one detail changed, the whole draft needed another night of checking. She entered the real rules into Bell Path once, then reviewed the result instead of rebuilding it.
FAQ
Questions schools ask before they start.
What makes Bell Path different from a generic timetable generator?
It is built for primary schools. Planning time, meetings, job-shares and specialist rotations are part of the setup, not workarounds, and Bell Path checks the finished timetable against all of them before you send it to staff.
Can Bell Path help after the timetable is published?
Yes. Daily cover, yard duty and wet day plans are built from the same timetable, and every version is saved, so it stays useful all term.
Can Bell Path build a fortnightly timetable, with a Week A and a Week B?
Yes. Mark a subject or a meeting as fortnightly and Bell Path places it in one week of the two, keeps every teacher’s planning time right in both weeks, shows one week at a time on the grid, and prints Week A pages then Week B pages. When a weekly cycle cannot fit everything, Final Check suggests a fortnight as one of the remedies.
Who is Bell Path for?
Principals, assistant principals and anyone else who has to build the timetable and answer questions about it.
Also compare
How Bell Path stacks up against other options.
Bell Path vs TimetableMaster
Both products build school timetables. Bell Path is built only for Australian primary schools. TimetableMaster describes itself as an AI-powered scheduling platform for schools, colleges, universities and coaching institutes. That difference in focus is most of the comparison.
Bell Path vs Tes Timetable, powered by Edval
Bell Path is a guided timetabling product for Australian primary schools that you run yourself. Edval is a long-established Australian timetabling suite that now sits under the Tes brand as Tes Timetable, powered by Edval. This page is for a primary school weighing one against the other.
Free guides
Practical reading before you decide anything.
Guides written for Australian primary school leaders. No sign-up required.
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.
Planning time in primary schools: APT, RFF, NCT, DOTT and NIT.
Planning time is the weekly release from face-to-face teaching that every Australian primary teacher is entitled to. Victoria calls it APT, New South Wales RFF, Queensland NCT, Western Australia DOTT and South Australia NIT. The name changes, but the problem is the same everywhere: release time must be delivered to the minute, every week, and someone must teach the class while you do.
How to change a school timetable without rebuilding the whole week.
To change a school timetable mid-year without rebuilding it, keep the published week as your baseline, change the underlying staffing fact rather than the cells, compare how much the new version moves, and publish one clearly current version. A staffing change does not have to mean a fresh timetable and another round of disruption.
The school timetable checklist: what to check before staff see it.
Before staff see a new timetable, check every per-person promise (planning time to the minute, part-timer days, job-share handovers) and every structural one (rooms, meetings, duty coverage, bell times). Staff judge a timetable by the errors they find, not by the hundreds of sessions that were right. Run this checklist first and the timetable stays out of the staffroom conversation.
Specialist rotations: the timetable inside the timetable.
A specialist rotation is the pattern in which Art, PE, Music and other specialist teachers move through a school's classes each week, releasing each classroom teacher for planning as they go. It touches every class, every teacher's release time, and half the room bookings in the school. Design it deliberately and the rest of the timetable gets easier. Improvise it and everything downstream wobbles.
Ready when you are
Publish a timetable you can trust.
Bell Path builds the timetable from the details you give it, checks it before staff see it, and keeps working through the term for cover and duty rosters.