Course schedules: which course belongs to which class and term
The plain list behind the calendar, where a course meets a group.
A course schedule is one row that binds a course to a class for one academic unit: first year mathematics, taught to First Year, during the second term. Course Schedules is where those bindings live, as a plain sortable list rather than a calendar.
The head of department normally owns this screen, and fills it in once at the start of a year — this is the assignment list, the document that answers “who teaches what, to whom, and when”. The secretary uses it as the reference when building the timetable calendar, and the head of school reads it when a parent asks what their child is actually doing this term.
It is a deliberately small screen, and keeping it small is the point. A school has as many rows as it has courses multiplied by the classes those courses run in, which sounds large until you see that a school with 20 courses and 12 classes has far fewer than 240 rows once the combinations that do not exist are left out. Where this screen and the calendar seem to disagree, this screen is the authoritative version.
Record a course schedule in four steps
The three choices that make the row meaningful.
-
Step 1
Open Scheduling > Course Schedules
The table lists every row with its Course, Group, Academic Unit, Teacher, Hall and Status. Clicking Timetables in the toolbar takes you straight to the calendar version.
-
Step 2
Click New and choose the three essentials
The form asks for a Course, a Group and an Academic Time Unit. Those three are mandatory and are what make the row unique: the same course with the same group in a different term is a different row.
-
Step 3
Set the Teacher, the Hall and the Status
The Teacher and Hall selectors are optional in the dialog and can also be filled in directly on the table row. Status is one of Scheduled, Completed or Cancelled — set a row to Cancelled rather than deleting it when a course is dropped mid-year.
-
Step 4
Save, then check the calendar agrees
Save the row, then open Timetables and place a slot for it. If a slot exists without a matching row here, that lesson has a time but no confirmed assignment behind it.
What each column tells you
Seven columns, and the one most often left empty.
Course, Group and Academic Unit are the identity of the row
Read them together and you have the sentence “this course, to this class, in this term”. The Academic Unit column accepts anything your school uses as a term, a sequence or a semester, so a school organised by sequences and a school organised by semesters both live in the same column without translation.
Teacher is the column worth completing
It is optional in the dialog and the one most often left blank, which is why the table sometimes shows a course with nobody against it. Completing it is what turns this list from a curriculum into an allocation — and it is the column a head of department counts when asked how many hours a teacher carries this term. Fill it in when the allocation is made, not at the end of the year.
Hall records the room the course uses
Like Teacher, it is optional and completes the picture behind a calendar slot. It also gives the secretary a quick answer when a room booking comes in for that class and period.
Status is the retirement switch
Scheduled, Completed and Cancelled are the three values. A course dropped mid-year should be set to Cancelled rather than deleted: the row stays as the record that the course was on the programme and never ran, which is the answer to a question a parent or an inspector will eventually ask. A course that ran to its end can be set to Completed at the close of the period, which makes year-end reporting straightforward.
Course schedules and the calendar timetable
Two screens, two jobs, one source of truth.
The list says what, the calendar says when
A course schedule row carries no time of day. A timetable slot carries a date and an hour but only as a pointer to a course and a group. That split is deliberate: the assignment changes far less often than the slot does, and separating them means a lesson that moves from Tuesday to Thursday for a fortnight does not rewrite a single allocation.
Build the list first
Fill the course schedules for the year, then place the calendar slots on top of them. Doing it the other way round produces a timetable full of lessons nobody was ever allocated to teach — beautiful on the wall, useless to the head of department counting workloads.
When a term changes hands
If a teacher leaves in March, edit the Teacher on the affected rows rather than the calendar slots. The slots keep their times and rooms; the allocation behind them changes. Then move the calendar slots only if the class genuinely meets at a different hour, which is a different decision.
Bulk actions for a full retable
When a whole stream moves up a class, the table’s duplicate action copies a row with its teacher, hall and status; tick the rows, use it, then adjust the copies. Bulk delete clears a selection in one go when a term has been scrapped. On a screen that is mostly a list of assignments, those two actions replace most of the typing.
Where schedules lead
The screens that consume what you record here.
-
Place the hours
Timetables
Turn each row into a dated or recurring slot on the calendar, and let the clash check watch the room, the class and the teacher.
-
The subject itself
Courses
The course carries the template and the content; this screen decides which class receives it in which term.
-
The receiving group
Classes
The classes enrolled here are the rows that appear on the class board when marks are published.
-
The room
Halls and rooms
The hall list behind the Hall selector, so a course schedule can record the room without typing its name.
Course schedule questions
Asked by head departments setting the allocation for a year.
-
Do I have to fill in both Course Schedules and Timetables?
Yes, because they answer different questions. A course schedule says which course is taught to which class in which term; a timetable slot says what day and hour it happens. Only the schedule decides the allocation and who is entitled to the hours, so a lesson on the calendar with no matching row is a lesson with no confirmed teacher behind it.
-
Is the Teacher column really necessary?
It is optional in the form, and the single most useful thing you can fill in. Completed, it turns a curriculum list into an allocation you can count: how many hours each teacher carries, which course has nobody, who is free on Wednesday. Left blank, you have a list of subjects with no staff attached, and no way to answer a parent asking who teaches their child.
-
Should I delete a course that will not run?
Set its Status to Cancelled instead. The row stays, which means the school can still answer “was this course on the programme?” — a question that arrives at inspection, at a board meeting, or from a parent two years later. Cancelled is also reversible: if the course runs after all, switch the status back.
-
A teacher is replaced mid-term. What do I change?
Change the Teacher on the affected course schedule rows. The calendar slots keep their times and their rooms, and only the allocation behind them changes. Move a calendar slot only if the class genuinely meets at a different hour — otherwise the replacement shows up on the timetable and the logbook automatically, and nobody has to touch a calendar.