Dave
Timetabler
Used Tes Timetable daily for 3-4 years
Mar 2024
I would give this a 9, because I can cope and find other ways of doing things where the program lacks functionality. So for what it is it is 9 in terms of me having a product that does most of what we need it to do at any given time. (If they later include some other aspects such as taking student options into consideration when optimising, I would give it 10) The reason I give it 2 above is that there are bugs in each part of the program that can mess up data, hang the program, crash the program or otherwise stops it from doing what it should do. They do respond and fix software and roll out updates but I have seen multiple times that they roll out a bug fix for one thing only to mess up something else and this has happened on more than on occasion. So I have spent 4 hours today, trying to figure out why something that worked before Christmas when merging groups doesn't work today. I've had to go back to previous versions to check that it was not me (user error) and then go back and log a report for them that they would understand. So 4 hours when I wanted to be using the tool and instead have got nowhere. Now I know it is not my fault but an upgrade that has messed up that feature I can hopefully progress with what I wanted to do but my whole morning - and my motivation - have been lost!
Dave found Tes Timetable:
- Does not significantly save school money“My time is used often in identifying and working around bugs in the software which is very frustrating, however the optimisation/improve algorithms are fast so I can try many changes in a short time so I guess that balances it out. Of course sometimes those optimisations also create errors and have to be run again so that is a problem.”
- Does not significantly reduce teacher workload“It does not optimise the teacher's day very well with big gaps in the day for teachers so some are not very happy about that and certainly it does not do that for students at all so they can have big gaps in the day. So teachers have to deal with unhappy students and parents sometimes. But it does help structure a timetable for the school which is very good.”
- Does not significantly improve teacher wellbeing“No, please see previous comment as large gaps in the teacher's day can be very stressful for them.”
- Moderately improves school processes“Identifying where there are impossible teacher configurations in the design is very good and so is identifying where there are many student options which cannot fit into the number of periods available, but again bugs in this part of the software crashes the program and so it can be very time consuming sometimes.”
- Does not improve attainment“Not sure that is what we use it for and I guess you could argue that it does not when there are large gaps in student timetables. (The program does not consider student timetable options at all when optimising so does not work at making the day better for the majority of the students) Or when there are lots of first and last periods.”
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