Off-site rooms

Off-site rooms are specialist subject rooms and classrooms located at such a distance from the main school building that a whole period needs to be set aside to allow teachers and students to reach the off-site rooms. The automated optimisation function takes the length of the walking time into account when optimising the timetable.

Off-site rooms are entered under 'Rooms | Master data' in the 'Off-site' column.

A PE teacher is scheduled to teach periods 1 and 5 in the main building and period 3 at the (off-site) sports track. The timetabling tool will ensure that periods 2 and 4 remain unscheduled for the teacher to allow him or her sufficient time to reach the sports track.

Breaks of different lengths

Many schools use timetables where some breaks are longer than others and where it is therefore possible to reach an off-site location during one of the longer breaks. Breaks of sufficient length to reach an off-site location can be marked '+' in the time grid under 'Breaks'.

The figure above shows that the break between periods 2 and 3 is sufficiently long enough to reach the off-site location. The PE teacher in the example above would therefore be able to teach period 2 in the main building and still manage to reach the sports track in time for period 3.

Half-day external site

With the 'Half-day external site' option it is possible to specify that teachers and students may not switch buildings for half a day, thus minimising the number of times they need to switch buildings.

You can use off-site rooms either without graduated lesson start or with graduated lesson start. The following chapters explain this function in more detail.