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.
Fairness record
Term 2 · Week 4
Team avg 5h 00m
Bennett
4h 30m
30m
5h 00m
0
Chen
4h 00m
30m
4h 30m
−30m
Okafor
4h 15m
30m
4h 45m
−15m
Nguyen
4h 15m
45m
5h 00m
0
Patel
4h 00m
1h 15m
5h 15m
+15m
Singh
4h 30m
1h 00m
5h 30m
+30m
Sample staff · for illustration
How it works in the app
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 zones. 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 zones.
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
What this search usually means
You want every zone covered, and you want to show the load was fair.
Most schools already have a roster. What they do not have is 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.
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.
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 the people on the yard are not the people on the indoor zones.
Wet-day plan
When it rains at recess, the wet-day plan is one click away.
The wet-day plan takes the staff who were already on the yard and moves them to indoor zones. The staffroom and the office are always looking at the same version of the day.
- The same staff move indoors, so there is no second roster to build
- Every outdoor zone has an indoor zone ready beside it
- The wet-day PDF prints from the same page as the normal one
Outdoor roster
Mon recess
North gate
Bennett
South gate
Chen
Big oval
Nguyen
Small oval
Okafor
Undercover
Patel
Sandpit
Singh
6 zones
Wet-day plan
Mon recess
Hall
Bennett
Library
Chen
Stage 2 quiet
Nguyen
Stage 4 quiet
Okafor
Foyer
Patel
Music room
Singh
6 zones
What the staffroom sees
The weekly roster, with the unfilled duty flagged.
This is the board that prints for the staffroom wall. Zones down the side, the week across the top, and any duty nobody is on shown in colour before you print.
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 | Nguyen | Patel | Bennett | Okafor | Singh | Chen | Patel | Unfilled | Nguyen | Bennett |
| North gate | Bennett | Chen | Singh | Nguyen | Okafor | Patel | Bennett | Singh | Chen | Okafor |
| Undercover | Chen | Okafor | Patel | Singh | Bennett | Nguyen | Chen | Okafor | Patel | Singh |
| Sandpit | Okafor | Singh | Nguyen | BennettChen | Patel | Bennett | Singh | Nguyen | Okafor | Chen |
Sample staff · for illustration
What Bell Path handles
From school setup to a duty roster you can explain.
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 moves the same staff to indoor zones
- 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
Related stories
See how Bell Path fits real school pressure.
Each story is built from the patterns schools describe to us. Names and identifying details are left out.
FAQ
Questions schools ask before they start.
Can Bell Path guarantee every duty is covered?
No, and it does not pretend to. 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. The duty roster does not yet read the same-day absences you enter in Daily Cover, so a same-morning change is made in the roster itself.
Does Bell Path track yard duty in hours, in counts, or both?
Both. You can balance the school on duty counts, on minutes, or read both side by side. The balance is the same either way.
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. The wet-day plan takes the same staff as the outdoor roster and moves them to indoor zones. 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
Practical reading before you decide anything.
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. 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.
Wet day plans: decide at 8:40, not at 12:40.
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. Rain turns a solved supervision problem into an unsolved one with a deadline. The schools that handle it calmly all do the same four things, and none of them happen on the day.
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.