Free tool
Specialist coverage checker
Most primary timetables that will not come together fail for the same reason, and it is not scheduling. The school has promised more planning time than its specialist program can physically release, and no arrangement of the week can fix that.
This checks the arithmetic in about a minute, before you build anything.
Go to the specialist coverage checker
This runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is submitted, saved, or sent anywhere, and there is no signup.
Your school
Sets the entitlement, so you do not have to look it up.
People, not positions. A job-shared class is two here.
Roughly. Their entitlement is prorated against it.
Classroom teachers only. Do not count your specialists here: in this calculation they are the ones providing the release, not the ones receiving it, so adding them would count them on both sides.
Each teacher is owed
4h a week of APT
That is 4 sessions of 60 minutes. Basis: Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2022.
What your specialists supply
One row per specialist subject. How many of your 12 classes it reaches, and how many sessions each of those classes gets a week.
What this means for your teachers
Each teacher ends up 9 minutes short, every week.
Spread evenly, your 48 specialist sessions give each of your 14 teachers about 3.4 of the 4 they are owed. Across the school that is 2 sessions a week you do not have.
- Release needed
- 50
- 8 full time × 4, 6 part time × 3
- Specialists supply
- 48
- sessions a week
Part-timers cost more release than their fraction suggests
You cannot release somebody for two thirds of a lesson, so every entitlement rounds up to a whole session. Across your 6 part-time teachers that rounding adds about 4 extra sessions a week that a staffing spreadsheet will not show you.
What closes a gap this size
- Let specialists’ spare time cover classroom teachers. Most schools have some and never count it, and it is the most common way a gap disappears without anyone losing an entitlement.
- Add about 2 specialist sessions a week. Extending one subject to every class adds 12.
- Count meetings or time-block release that already return planning time, if your agreement allows it.
- Reduce entitlements by agreement. Schools reach for this first and it should be last, because it is the only one where a teacher loses something.
Clearing the total proves a timetable is arithmetically possible, not that one exists. Part-time days and job-share patterns decide whether the sessions actually land where they are needed.
How this works
What the numbers above are doing.
Demand is per teacher
Entitlements attach to people, not classes. Count both halves of a job-share separately, because each one is owed their own release on the days they work.
Supply is per session
Each specialist session with a class frees that class’s teacher for that session. Total supply is every subject multiplied by the classes it covers and the sessions each gets a week.
A pass is necessary, not sufficient
Clearing the total proves a timetable is arithmetically possible. Whether the sessions align with the right people on the right days is the part a solver settles.
Questions
Common follow-ups.
Why would a timetable be impossible rather than just hard?
Because release has to come from somewhere. Every hour a classroom teacher spends on planning time is an hour somebody else is with their class, and in a primary school that somebody is almost always a specialist. If the specialist program does not contain enough sessions to cover every entitlement, no arrangement of those sessions will deliver them. It is a supply problem, and rearranging a timetable cannot manufacture supply.
Why does it ask for teachers rather than classes?
Because entitlements attach to people, not to classes. A school with twelve classes might have sixteen teachers who each need release, because four of those classes are job-shared. Counting classes instead of teachers is the most common way schools underestimate demand, and it is usually the reason a timetable that looked fine on paper will not generate.
My program covers it. Does that mean my timetable will work?
It means one can exist. It does not mean one does. The sessions still have to land in slots where the right specialist is free and the right classroom teacher is actually at school that day, which is where part-time patterns and job-share days make things difficult. Clearing this check is necessary, not sufficient.
I am short. What do most schools do?
The most common genuine fix is counting specialist spare time towards classroom release, because most schools have some and never count it. After that: adding a subject rotation, or counting meetings and time-block release that already return planning time where the agreement allows. Reducing entitlements by agreement is the option schools usually reach for first, and it should be the last, because it is the only one where a teacher loses something.
Does Bell Path do this check automatically?
Yes, against your real school rather than round numbers, and it runs before you can publish. When the sum does not work it names the teachers who are short, by how much, and which of the fixes above would close it, rather than returning a generic failure.
Other free tools
If the answer was not what you hoped
Bell Path runs this check on your real school.
Same calculation, against your actual staff, classes and specialist program, with the timetable built around the result and a check that runs before you publish.