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Diplomas

MIST Services help many schools timetable diplomas and would like to pose some questions and topic areas for consideration.

Consideration to diplomas
Diplomas have been starting to come into school timetables for the last couple of timetabling seasons and are creating an ever increasing challenge for schools and the timetabler! In summary the diplomas are generally opted for by small numbers (or percentage) of students in comparison to the cohort as a whole. It has literally been known to be in a timetable for one student but is typically in the region of six to twelve students. By the nature of the diploma they are typically whole days either with the school being the host or with the students going to another school or college. With the students going 'off-site' many schools and timetablers see this as an advantage as the school doesn't necessarily provide staff for it. In reality this advantage is out weighed by the constraints it actually creates on the school timetable! If we take a school which has five, one hour lessons a day and in Year 10 the diploma students have opted for the diploma in two out of three of their option columns (in our example the diploma is in option column A and B). This means that when the year 10 students are out all day on a Friday, the rest of Year 10 will be doing option A and B on the Friday. That is saying 3 lessons of option A and 2 lessons of option B (or vice versa), and if a option column only had three periods a week then that option is all on one day! Is that acceptable? For some schools even having two periods of option A and option B would be less than desirable, especially if the columns include certain subjects or languages. The school could obvious decide whether the subjects had double lessons, or whether they simply had two singles on the same day.

How a diploma can be mapped out
If the school opts to have two double lessons, one of A and B on the diploma day it still leaves a single period what the diploma students will not be in school for! This causes great concern for schools as the non-diploma students cannot do a single of option C as the diploma students are in it! Many schools will look to dis-apply the diploma students from a subject for a single period, but what subject should they miss? Schools typically don't want the diploma students to miss a lesson of Maths, English or Science therefore before you know it the choices are becoming quite limited! Many schools will elect a subject like pse, re, ict and then have to put on a special diploma group for the students when they are back in school. This needs to be considered very carefully as certain subjects with small curriculum percentages may not mathematically work. Also opting for certain subjects may be seen as de-valuing the subject. A big consideration that must be factored in is that schools typically split year groups into X and Y, A and B, North and South cohorts and as such the diploma students can quite easily be students from both sides of the curriculum. This without a flicker of a doubt adds a massive constraint to the timetabling and curriculum design as in effect you will have two groups dis-applied and not just one! It is strongly recommended that the diploma students are put onto one side of the curriculum if at all possible.

Is it possible to schedule ?
Having worked out a curriculum you are happy with that caters for your diplomas, when it comes to the task of scheduling you may have created an impossible task. In our example the Year 10 students are going to have a double lesson of option A and a double lesson of B and fifth period is going to be PSE, with the diploma students picking this up when the year 10s are doing the third period of A or B (you still need to occupy the diploma students for another period!). Therefore the day is full for all year 10 non diploma students. Maths, science and english cannot could on the diploma day. Which is a problem if Maths has 5 single lessons, as a single lesson is wanted on each day of the week? As a school you would need to look at your curriculum and decide whether in fact you wanted to schedule three singles and a double, or schedule five singles knowing two singles will come on the same day and may or may not form a double lesson.

Even more considerations
If you thought there couldn't be any more factors to consider, there is one more - part timers! We know that option A, occurs on the diploma day and option A includes electronics but unfortunately the electronics teacher is part time and doesn't work on the diploma day! Another impossibility before you even really get started on timetabling! There are sometimes solutions such as re-negotiate the day with the part timer, move the teacher off that group to another teacher (who is capable of teaching the subject), create a split teaching group so that the part timer can take the lessons on the non diploma days.

As you can see the above examples are quite typical of many schools and when you consider that you are typically going to have both Year 10 and Year 11 having different diploma days the impacts are immense. Often for a small number of students, although this isn't saying it isn't worthwhile. One aspect that hasn't been mentioned to date is transport, how are the students going to get to the 'host' if it isn't at your school? Does the timetable allow the student to travel back to your school should that be required?

Is your school introducing diploma lines?
If your school has questions on implementing diplomas or designing curriculums to cater for diplomas contact MIST Services. MIST Services works with many schools, colleges and Academies each academic year, ultimately being exposed to literally hundreds of curriculums and timetabling problems.