Calculation with multiple timetable structures

[sonox]

Hi folks,

I'm currently trying to assist a basic school in the creation of a better timetable and I'm kind of stuck due to rather special requirements.

The school I'm working with has not just one timetable structure but 3 instead. The lower levels, e.g. nursery and kindergarten have more breaks and shorter (30') and fewer periods (6) per day. In primary the periods are longer (45') and 8 periods with 2 main breaks. In junior high they have 55'-periods but different main break times.

If a school uses class-based teaching with one or two teachers teaching all subjects of a class, there would be a way out by calculating the 3 timetables more or less independently. The new situation is different with administration pushing subject teaching with each teacher basically teaching in every grade.

Is there a way out?

Kind regards,
Roman

[Liviu Lalescu]

An idea is to define the greatest common divisor of the periods of all the hours as a FET hour, for instance real 5 minutes for a FET "hour". The maximum number of hours  per day in FET is 60, but it can be increased.

Another idea might be a custom version.

[sonox]

Hi Liviu

I conclude from your answer that my scenario is rather uncommon. Do you
agree that FET is not designed to deal with multiple timetable structures?

Kind regards,
Roman

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Roman,

FET was designed to deal with a single week, an integer duration for each activity. So yes, it was not made specifically for your situation. I could say that FET was not designed to deal with multiple timetable structures.

But I think if you use the trick you will obtain feasible and exact results. Maybe I did not express myself clearly. For instance, if an activity of length one period is in kindergarten, it will have the FET duration 6 (30/5), in junior high 11 (55/5) and in primary 9 (45/5). In primary I think you have 8*9=72 "FET hours per day", so if you recompile FET with 72 hours per day it should work.

[sonox]

Hi Liviu,

Thanks a lot for your input!

This sounds great since it's a rather simple solution. Is there nothing else?

Where is the parameter I need to change before compilation?

Kind regards,
Roman

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hi Liviu,

Thanks a lot for your input!

This sounds great since it's a rather simple solution. Is there nothing else?

Maybe to triple the number of days per week (first week for kindergarten, second week for junior high, and third week for primary) and make a custom version so that corresponding conflicting slots for teachers are forbidden. But this is unnecessarily complicated.

Where is the parameter I need to change before compilation?

src/engine/timetable_defs.h, line 169 (const int MAX_HOURS_PER_DAY=60;). You can avoid the need to modify the dialog of hours per day, if you only edit the .fet XML file in the hours of the day section by hand (with a text or XML editor) and never open from the GUI the hours per day dialog.

Kind regards,
Roman

Please let me know.