At times Education and software can use many different terms, phrases and jargon
which aren't always completely obvious in what they mean. Below is a
glossary of terms to help you. If you cannot find what you are looking
after a search, simply type in your phrase and click on submit. Please
supply your email address so we can update you on your phrase.
| Phrase | Meaning |
| Band | A grouping of students for curriculum delivery purposes. Typically a school may divide a year group into two halves (A and B, X or Y etc). |
| Block | A block is when you want certain lesson to be timetabled at the same time i.e. creates a block on the timetable. |
| Carousel | This is typically when the students either go from teacher a to teacher b through the year or subject a to subject b through the year. Often seen in Technology and Science. |
| Cell style | This can be interpreted as the contents displayed for the lesson within a timetable style. System cell styles are provided, although these can be cloned so that they are fully editable. |
| Change history | Within Facility Scheduler this tracks the changes that have occurred, potentially allowing you to undo certain actions. |
| Circus | This is typically when the students either go from teacher a to teacher b through the year or subject a to subject b through the year. Often seen in Technology and Science. |
| Class | Some timetablers will refer to this as a grouping of students that are being taught. The majority of the time it should be seen as the collection of students that form a tutor group, class group, registration group or form group. Depending on your school terminology. |
| Cohort | A grouping of students for curriculum delivery purposes. Typically a school may divide a year group into two halves (A and B, X or Y etc). |
| Combing chart | A theoretical check on timetable data to see if a curriculum is actually possible. Typically done on a subject or department level. A successful combing chart doesn't guarantee a timetable as it doesn't factor in restrictions or constraints.
Have you seen our timetable combing chart tool kit? |
| Common setting | This is where different subjects agree on the common setting of students, to increase flexibility in timetabling or to allow for staffing restrictions. |
| Conflict matrices | This is generally when you are looking to see how many teachers are in common between option blocks, or students that are in common between option columns. In respect to conflicts on teachers a conflict of one is no better than a conflict of two or three. As such it might be that as you reduce the one to a zero you issue another conflict. |
| Constraint | A constraint is another restriction on the timetable and generally related to time i.e. a teacher doesn't work on a Monday. Therefore constraining the time for when the lessons can be timetabled. |
| Contact ratio | This is the amount of teaching for an individual teacher, compared to the number of lessons within the week. Some schools represent it as 0.8, others represent it as 80% for example. |
| Core | In respect to Facility Scheduler, this is the curriculum that is generally taught as classgroup populations and doesn't involve any blocking structures. |
| Curriculum | The subject entitlement for the students that will be staffed and ultimately scheduled. |
| Curriculum diagram | Subject entitlement, typically drawn out by year group illustrating the structures involved. |
| Curriculum plan | Subject entitlement, typically drawn out by year group illustrating the structures involved. |
| Cycle | This typically defines how many days are in your timetable week or 'cycle'. |
| Division | A grouping of students for curriculum delivery purposes. Typically a school may divide a year group into two halves (A and B, X or Y etc). |
| Dynamic block | This is a grouping of events in Facility Timetabler (version prior to Facility Scheduler), which allows many different permutations of events (lessons) to be placed. Typically used when split teaching groups are in Key Stage 5 or where there is common setting across subjects. |
| Event | Used heavily in Facility Scheduler and means a collection of resources to be timetabled. In very basic terms an event is a lesson or an activity on a timetable. |
| Event specification | This is a Facility Scheduler term which means the timings of the school day. It is possible to have different times for different year groups or resources. As everything is time based clashing in effect works across event specifications. |
| Extraction | Specific terminology for Facility when you extract (take out) timetable data from Facility Admin. |
| Feasibility | A theoretical check on timetable data to see if a curriculum is actually possible. Typically done on a subject or department level. A successful combing chart doesn't guarantee a timetable as it doesn't factor in restrictions or constraints. |
| FFT | Fischer Family Trust, is data that you can import into your MIS and typically used as forecast grades or used as a parameter in predictions. |
| Filter | A collection of resources you want to use again or simply want to filter down to. |
| Fixed time constraint | This is a constraint typically used to denote when a part time member of staff is not available i.e. all day on a Monday. Can be used on other resources such as rooms and subjects to denote unavailability as well. |
| FTE | Full time equivalent. Typically used when expressing part time commitments, so a teacher who teaches 3 days out of 5 would be 0.6 fte |
| Inspector | A timetable view within Facility Scheduler that updates automatically from other timetable views. Allowing you to easily inspect a timetable without the need to change filters manually. |
| Integration | Specific terminology for Facility when you integrate (put data back) into Facility Admin, having completed your work in Facility Scheduler. |
| Limited Link | This is a grouping of events in Facility Scheduler, which allows many different permutations of events (lessons) to be placed. Typically used when split teaching groups are in Key Stage 5 or where there is common setting across subjects. |
| Link | A link is a relationship between certain events (or lessons), most Facility Scheduler users use a link to actually spread the lessons across the week. |
| Link with Limit | This is a grouping of events in Facility Scheduler, which allows many different permutations of events (lessons) to be placed. Typically used when split teaching groups are in Key Stage 5 or where there is common setting across subjects. |
| MidYIS | MidYIS data is typically reffered to as baseline data. |
| Multiples | This will be when the lesson spans across more than one lesson i.e. a double or triple. |
| Non-contact | This is an activity such as PPA that should be scheduled against the teacher. Typically defined as occupying the staff but not necessarily involves any students. |
| Option block | Generally where several subjects are scheduled at the same time and the student is allowed to pick one subject out of the option block or option column. |
| Organised block | A specific Facility Scheduler term where you want certain lessons to be on at the same time. Technically an organised block is when there are two or more lessons in a week. |
| Planning matrices | A specific Facility Scheduler term which means the screens that the curriculum can be entered or modified through easily. |
| Printout | The paper version of the timetable, whether it is a teacher, student, room, subject. |
| Priority | Within Facility Scheduler you can prioritise events which gives each event a numerical value on how hard the system feels it is to place. Constraints, size of structures to name a few factors are considered. The larger the number the harder Scheduler feels it is to place. |
| Resource colouring | It is possible to assign a colour to a teacher or subject for exmaple and display this in a timtable view within Scheduler to allow you to check the spread of lessons easily. |
| Restriction | A restriction on the timetable or timetable resource for example the number of lessons a teacher can teach in a week, or the number of simultaneous lessons that can be timetabled for a certain subject. |
| Room pools | A collection of rooms given to the timetable to allow one room to be selected i.e. a pool of science labs. |
| Room preference | The room a teacher or subject would prefer to teach in. |
| Room preferences | A preference can be set in Facility Scheduler to say a teacher would like a certain room if auto rooming. A preference could be given to a subject, to allow a workshop to be given to certain technology subjects. |
| Rotation | This is typically when the students either go from teacher a to teacher b through the year or subject a to subject b through the year. Often seen in Technology and Science. |
| Scheduling | This is the process of actually timetabling events or lessons. |
| Split lunch | This is when students do not have a common lunch break, generally down to the number of students the dining area can take. Therefore certain year groups go for early lunch and others go for a late lunch. The rules are defined by the school. |
| Split site | This is when a school operates across sites with some lessons occurring on the upper site and some on the lower site for example. |
| Staggered lunch | This is when students do not have a common lunch break, generally down to the number of students the dining area can take. Therefore certain year groups go for early lunch and others go for a late lunch. The rules are defined by the school. |
| Static Block | A specific Facility Timetabler (version prior to Facility Scheduler) term where you want certain lessons to be on at the same time. Technically an organised block is when there are two or more lessons in a week. |
| Teacher pools | A collection of teachers that can teach a certain subject typically, when you don't mind who teaches what group and allow the software to select. |
| Teacher teams | Generally seen as a collection of teachers of a subject selected carefully to allow efficient combing. |
| Teaching group | A group of students that are being tauight a subject together. |
| Timetable source | Within Facility you typically set up one timetable source (top level filter for a timetable), as majority of schools only have one timetabler and one timetable. If you have two timetablers i.e. Junior and Senior school timetabler you could set up two sources meaning when an extract is taken by the Junior timetabler the Senior timetable is extracted albeit read only. |
| Timetable style | The timetable style controls the look and feel of the day and time axis, along with the grid style. Although system styles are provided it is possible to clone a copy which is editable by the user. |
| ttd file | This is the specific file that is created from Facility Admin when you extract a timetable file. |
| Validate data | A routine ran in Facility Scheduler that checks your curriculum plan typically for data inconsistencies. Examples include a teacher in an event, despite them not being associated to the subject in the event. Or impossibilities in blocking structures i.e. a teacher being used twice in a block! |
| Validate timetable | Will check your schedule and highlight any clashes or rules that have been broken during the scheduling process. Problems only occur if you have relaxed enforce clash checking or used the analysis mode. |
| Vertical teaching | When students from different national curriculum year groups are taught together. Many schools do this for 'fast tracking' or 'stage not age'. |
| Virtual classgroup | This is a specific term for Facility Scheduler and acts as a clash entity. Each event will be associated to a virtual classgroup and then classgroups are clashed so that a classgroup (virtual) can only do one lesson at a time. |
| Week | Within Facility this is the number of days involved in the cycle. |
| Week range | A very powerful attribute of an event which maps the lesson across the year. Used extensively for rotations, semester timetables etc. |
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