Yard duty roster software
See every unfilled yard duty before it reaches the playground.
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 rostered. The fairness record sits right beside it, in hours and in counts, for the whole year.
Already run one? Send the file and it is in Bell Path within 48 hours, with Daily Cover free for two weeks.
Fairness record
Term 2 · Week 4
Team avg 5h 00m
Wilson
4h 30m
30m
5h 00m
0
Taylor
4h 00m
30m
4h 30m
−30m
Martin
4h 15m
30m
4h 45m
−15m
Thompson
4h 15m
45m
5h 00m
0
Jones
4h 00m
1h 15m
5h 15m
+15m
Mitchell
4h 30m
1h 00m
5h 30m
+30m
Sample staff · for illustration
Yard duty has three tabs: Roster, Settings and History.
Roster is the weekly board you print. Settings holds the staff rules and the wet-day rooms. History is where you go when someone asks about the load across the year.
Roster
Open the week, change a duty if you need to, save, then print.
Settings
Set duty times, who is exempt, what earns credit, and the wet-day rooms.
History
Show this year's hours when a staff member asks whether the load has been fair.
Unfilled duties
Shown before you print
Fairness
Across the year
Measured in
Hours and counts
Sharing
PDF and print
You want every zone covered, and you want to show the load was fair.
Most schools already have a roster, but not a record they can put in front of a staff member who is convinced they got the worst of it.
The first job of a yard duty roster is to keep every zone covered while children are outside. Mark a staff member away for the week and Bell Path shows exactly which duties that leaves unfilled, so you can fix them before the week is printed. It also stops one teacher being booked on two zones at the same time.
Fairness comes next. Bell Path keeps a running record of rostered minutes, credited minutes, and how each teacher compares with the team average. When it rains, the wet-day plan uses the same staff, so you are not keeping a second document.
What goes wrong with a yard duty roster.
A staff member is away for the week, a zone is left unfilled, and nobody notices until recess.
Fairness gets argued from memory because nobody has the year's numbers in front of them.
Meeting cover, leave and credited duties are tracked by hand, on the side.
The wet-day plan lives in a separate file, so nobody is sure who watches which room when it rains.
When it rains at recess, the wet-day plan is one click away.
The staffroom and the office are always looking at the same version of the day.
- Teachers already on duty go indoors, so there is no second roster to build
- Each room gets one of its listed teachers, and a room nobody can take is flagged
- The wet-day PDF prints from the same page as the normal one
Outdoor roster
Mon recess
North gate
Wilson
South gate
Taylor
Big oval
Thompson
Small oval
Martin
Undercover
Jones
Sandpit
Mitchell
6 zones
Wet-day plan
Mon recess
Hall
Wilson
Library
Taylor
Music room
Martin
Foyer
Jones
4 rooms · 2 staff free
The weekly roster, with the unfilled duty flagged.
This is the board that prints for the staffroom wall.
Staffroom roster
Term 2 · Week 4
1 unfilled duty
| Zone | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recess | Lunch | Recess | Lunch | Recess | Lunch | Recess | Lunch | Recess | Lunch | |
| Big oval | Thompson | Jones | Wilson | Martin | Mitchell | Taylor | Jones | Unfilled | Thompson | Wilson |
| North gate | Wilson | Taylor | Mitchell | Thompson | Martin | Jones | Wilson | Mitchell | Taylor | Martin |
| Undercover | Taylor | Martin | Jones | Mitchell | Wilson | Thompson | Taylor | Martin | Jones | Mitchell |
| Sandpit | Martin | Mitchell | Thompson | WilsonTaylor | Jones | Wilson | Mitchell | Thompson | Martin | Taylor |
Sample staff · for illustration
What Bell Path does for yard duty.
What it does
- Unfilled duties shown before you publish, next to the staff member who is away
- A teacher can never be booked on two zones at the same time
- This year's balance in hours and in counts, side by side
- Credited time for meeting cover, late arrivals and approved exemptions
- Named zones (gate, oval, undercover), with two staff on one zone where it needs two
- A wet-day plan that sends a teacher already on duty to each indoor room
- PDFs for the staffroom, the cover sheet and the fairness record
Why schools choose Bell Path
- An absence cannot quietly leave a zone empty
- Double-bookings are caught before the week reaches the staffroom
- You have a record of who was rostered for each duty if you are ever asked
- Fairness is a record anyone can read
- The wet-day swap is one screen in the same roster
- The balance carries across terms instead of resetting with each new roster
Planning stories.
Composite examples of common planning situations, not reports from one school.
FAQ
Questions schools ask before they start.
Can Bell Path guarantee every duty is covered?
No. You can still publish a roster with an unfilled duty if that is the call you have to make. What Bell Path does is show every unfilled duty before you publish and stop one teacher being booked twice, so the decision is yours and not a surprise at recess.
What happens when a staff member is away for the duty week?
Mark them away in the roster and Bell Path shows exactly which duties that leaves unfilled, so you can reassign them before the week is printed. Daily Cover handles an absent teacher’s duties on the day, and if it has absences for a week the roster does not know about, the roster shows them and can mark those staff away in one click.
Does Bell Path track yard duty in hours, in counts, or both?
Both. You choose whether the roster balances duty counts or minutes, and the fairness record shows both side by side.
How are meeting cover, late arrivals, and credited duties handled?
Credited time is recorded against the staff member it should count for and goes into the fairness record automatically. Someone else fills the duty, but the original teacher still gets the credit.
Can Bell Path handle wet-day plans?
Yes. Each wet-day room is watched by one of its listed teachers who was already on duty at that break, and Bell Path flags any room nobody can take. The wet-day PDF prints from the same page.
Can a single duty be staffed by more than one teacher?
Yes. A zone can have two staff where it needs them, for example a long fence line with two gates, and each teacher is credited for their own duty.
What does the staffroom see?
A printed weekly roster, a wet-day version of the same week, and the fairness record. All three come from the same roster, so they cannot disagree.
Free guides.
Guides written for Australian primary school leaders. No sign-up required.
The yard duty roster: covered every break, fair all term.
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. 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.
How to run wet day plans in a primary school.
A wet day plan is a standing conversion of the yard duty roster: every outdoor zone maps to a named indoor post, decided once, so one call switches the whole roster when it rains.
Publish a timetable you can trust.
Send the timetable you already have and we load it within 48 hours, with Daily Cover free for two weeks. Building a new one? Setting up your school and previewing part of it is free.