Modifying existing timetables

[Vangelis Karafillidis]

In my country (Greece), schools need to modify their timetables quite many times during the school year. The reason is that not all teachers are hired at the beginning of the school year. Actually, teachers are hired "incrementally". So, up until February (or even March/April) schools need to change their timetables, each time new teachers are hired. The problem is that there is a practical necessity of modifying the previous (existing) timetable in such a way that each day "preserves" its activity content as much as possible.
My suggestion is to add a button at the generated timetable view, so the user could select the activities he/she wants and add a constraint, so that the selected activities would be placed in the new timetable in selected time slots. In this way, the timetable will change of course, but it would not affect the test planning of the school, etc.
What do other users think? Would this feature be useful for their schools? Greece might be an exception... Who knows?

Vangelis

[Alex Chernous]

The problem is that there is a practical necessity of modifying the previous (existing) timetable in such a way that each day "preserves" its activity content as much as possible.

Fully agree. Lock time mean the one time slot, but in this case, it is necessary range of slots, usually one particular day, for all activities in this range. For some teachers and some groups, I add special constraint for this, but not all of them.
Greece not an exception. I live in Crimea, and I changeed timetable 8 times in this year.

[Vangelis Karafillidis]

What about other countries? Do schools need to change/modify their timetables during the school year or not? For what reasons? Are all teachers hired from the beginning of the school year?

[Alex Chernous]

Do schools need to change/modify their timetables during the school year or not?

The number of hours per week can change (for some subjects). For example: 2.5 hour per week in year - it mean 2 hour/week in 1-st semester and 3 h/w in 2-nd semester.

For what reasons?

The workload of teachers can change for various reasons (maternity leave, retirement, new teacher).

Are all teachers hired from the beginning of the school year?

There are not enough teachers. Therefore, we start the year with a heavy load, and then we manage to find new teachers for the position and redistribute the hours.