Planning time calculator for Australian primary teachers
Every Australian state and territory sets primary planning time differently, and two of them do not publish a weekly figure at all. This planning time calculator estimates what one teacher is owed, using the same calculation Bell Path uses to build real timetables.
Go to the planning time calculator
Free, with no signup. It runs entirely in your browser, so nothing you type is submitted, saved or sent anywhere.
Your school
Not counting recess and lunch.
Full time.
This teacher is owed
4h
per week of APT, which is 4 sessions of 60 minutes.
- Full-time entitlement
- 4h
- Weekly teaching load
- 25h
Worked out from your teaching hours
Victoria caps face-to-face teaching hours rather than publishing a weekly release figure, so the entitlement changes when your session times change. Adjust the sessions above and this number moves with them.
Basis: Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2022
Every state, for your school
The full-time entitlement for each state and territory, calculated for the school you described above.
Scroll the table sideways to see how each entitlement is worked out.
| State | Called | Full time | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western Australia | DOTT | 4h 30m | Fixed weekly entitlement |
| South Australia | NIT | 4h 10m | Fixed weekly entitlement |
| Victoria | APT | 4h | Worked out from teaching hours |
| Tasmania | DOTT | 4h | Worked out from teaching hours |
| ACT | Release time | 4h | Worked out from teaching hours |
| Northern Territory | NCT | 4h | Fixed weekly entitlement |
| Queensland | NCT | 2h 30m | Fixed weekly entitlement |
| New South Wales | RFF | 2h | Fixed weekly entitlement |
Treat these as planning estimates. Agreements are renegotiated, and your school’s own arrangements may differ.
How this works.
Two different systems
New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory publish a fixed weekly release entitlement. Victoria and Tasmania instead cap face-to-face teaching hours, so the entitlement is worked out from how much your school teaches. For Tasmania the calculator applies the standard instructional-load cap for a classroom teacher, and does not model extra release the agreement gives particular groups of teachers.
Government-school figures
The figures are the ones government schools work to. Catholic and independent schools work to their own agreements. In Bell Path you enter your agreement’s figure and every teacher is checked against it the same way.
Part time is worked out from real days
Part-time entitlement is worked out from the sessions a teacher works rather than a rounded day count. Rounding is where small, persistent shortfalls usually come from.
The Northern Territory moves
NT non-contact time steps up during the life of the current agreement, so a timetable that met it last year may not meet it this year. South Australia moves too: EA24 gives each school an extra hour of NIT in the year set by its Index of Educational Disadvantage category, from 2024 for category 1 through to 2029 for categories 6 and 7. The calculator asks for the year, and for SA the category, rather than assuming one figure for everybody.
Common questions.
What is planning time called in my state?
Victoria calls it APT (additional planning time), New South Wales calls it RFF (relief from face-to-face teaching), Queensland and the Northern Territory use NCT (non-contact time), South Australia uses NIT (non-instruction time), and Western Australia and Tasmania use DOTT (duties other than teaching). The ACT has no one standard acronym, so this calculator calls it release time.
Why does the Victorian and Tasmanian figure change when I change the session length?
In those two states the entitlement is worked out, not published. They cap face-to-face teaching hours rather than stating a weekly release figure, so the planning time a teacher receives is the teaching time in your week above that cap. Change your bell times and the entitlement moves. That is the most common way a school ends up short without noticing.
How is part-time planning time calculated?
It is worked out from the days and sessions the teacher works, not from a rounded fraction of a week. A teacher on two and a half days receives the entitlement matching that pattern. Rounding to the nearest whole day is the usual source of a small, persistent shortfall that nobody notices until somebody counts.
Does this account for job-shares?
Run the calculator once for each half of the pair, with the days each person works. Two teachers sharing one class are two entitlements, not one, and treating them as a single full-time teacher is the most common mistake we see in primary timetables.
Can I rely on this for an industrial conversation?
Treat it as a planning estimate. The figures come from the same calculation Bell Path uses to build real timetables, based on each state or territory’s published agreement or workload guidance, but agreements get renegotiated and your school may have its own arrangements. Confirm against your current agreement before relying on it in a formal setting.
Other free tools
Bell Path checks this for every teacher.
Enter your staff and bell times once. Bell Path works out each teacher’s planning time, builds the week around it and tells you before you publish if anyone is short.