School timetabling consultants and trainers

Chris Knights-Branch
Chris Knights-Branch has a background in both Education and software.
Over an eight year period with Serco Learning Chris held various positions ranging from Support, Trainer, Regional Director, Training Manager and Timetable Development Manager. He prides himself on understanding the needs of the customer and wishes to excel on expectations.

Each year Chris works work several hundred schools and academies in the UK and Internationally helping them through the timetabling process.

Peter Knights-Branch
Peter is also a fountain of knowledge, with over 40 years of timetabling experience. Peter spent 25 years in education working with schools across the world, including 2 headships. This excellent "hands-on experience" is invaluable to schools and provides a much better service than normal "theoretical consultancy".

Each year Peter works work several hundred schools and academies in the UK and Internationally helping them through the timetabling process.

John Walton
John has nearly 40 years experience in secondary education, the last 30 in curriculum planning and development roles and in timetabling at deputy head level. Timetabling was initially carried out manually and more recently using SIMS/Nova-T and Serco Facility software. His timetabling experience includes extensive collaborative and consortium working and both one and two week timetables as well as all the common setting, blocking and rotational arrangements. John also has extensive experience of developing solutions to a range of curriculum requirements and matching these to available resources. Throughout this period John has also managed large SIMS and Facility installations and was responsible for managing a changeover between the two.

Michael J Scott
Michael is currently Deputy Headteacher in a large school in the North West where he oversees the Curriculum, Timetable, Data, Assessment and Emerging Technologies. Prior to this, Michael was Assistant Head in a highly successful Lancashire school and has also worked in and timetabled a 2000 pupil comprehensive school in Cheshire and two schools in Germany

Michael's expertise is in Nova T4/6, M+C, Capita and October Resolutions Options and SIMS.net as well as designing a variety of curriculum models including one and two week timetables and uneven cycles. Michael is also a National Specialist Leader of Education in the field of Curriculum Design and has supported schools across the Country with (re)costing and developing their curriculum to meet the school's needs and budget. Michael also enjoys designing spreadsheets for data capture as well as using these to plan and evolve curriculum models. Whilst many find timetabling a stressful experience, Michael describes his interest as a relaxing pastime (!) and is always keen to be of assistance.

Paul McGregor
Paul is currently Data Manager for a large secondary school in East Anglia where he is responsible for developing and maintaining the school's Management Information System (MIS) and timetable. He is experienced with the use of the Facility suite of software - Admin, ePortal and Scheduler. Paul particularly enjoys the challenge of developing his school's timetable which offers a diverse curriculum including the International Baccalaureate (IB), Diploma, Young Apprenticeship, BTEC and other vocational courses as well as GCSEs and A-Levels, sometimes in partnership with other schools in the area.