Clash Research and Conclusion

Early research concluded really quickly with tutor time periods being the main cause to swap teachers/rooms.

However, further research as the school started to grow back to the 6 house system, Skye concluded the following on why different teachers teach the same class.

Teacher Clashes

Teacher clashes happen during the following scenarios:

Out of department clash (Including Tutor Time/PSHE)

When a teacher is timetabled to a class out of their department, this tends to clash with their departments master timetable. This includes Tutor Time/PSHE classes.

For example, one teacher in the system taught English and Media Studies at the same time and would have clashes when one year group was doing English and another year group doing Media. The clash happened as the English Department timetable was not made to suit the Media Studies timetable. With this in mind, the administrator sacrifices the subject with the most attention (English would have more taught periods per year group than Media outside of an A-Level context), and the clashing subjects would have a second teacher teaching English.

Another example is when tutor time clashes with their subject, for example, if Year 7 tutor time was a Period 5 on a Tuesday and the teacher was teaching a subject during that time; the administrator would do everything in their power to keep the tutor with their tutor group during this period, thus resulting in a second teacher and or another room for the class that clashed with Tutor Time.

Department internal clash

Due to frequencies of periods, subjects overlap in different year groups (For example: Year 9 and Year 10 English happening in the same period), as there are not enough English teachers for 12 Classes (At Horizon School, previously they only had 6 English teachers), thus different teachers had to be found during this clash (Typically Media Teachers).

Anecdotes

• At the beginnings of the timetable process, a massive clash between two year group's English classes were clashed. This resulted in a lecture like lesson where the year group would gather in the hall and one teacher would teach English alongside teachers that were free (Science Teachers) to supervise.

Office Hour Requirements

Some teachers are part-time thus require a second-teacher to cover days where they are not teaching.

Teachers can also have too many teaching periods in a week, thus they are required to have that period free. So the period gets swapped with a teacher of qualification for the same subject to allow the required free periods. This is typically 10% of the school week for planning (One period a day/5 periods a week)

Subject Requirements

Typically in A-Level class hours are split between two teachers to cover two pieces of diverse content at the same time. In A-Level this is typically split between 2 hours and 3 hours a week from the recommended 5 hours a week of teaching. This happens in Philosophy AQA A-Level as one teacher would cover Ethics/Metaphysics of God, and the other Epistemology/Metaphysics of mind. Thus this is an intentional part of timetabling.

Room Changes

Room changes happen primarily as the teacher is borrowing another teacher's room. This room clash would especially happen if the teacher is not in a room of their own department. Most prominently this was the case when Sports Studies was using random classrooms within the school before being allocated rooms.

For example, a drama teacher borrowing another room during their English periods as their own drama studio is not fit for the class. This was the case for an added English class in the 2024-2025 academic year, in which a room was allocated to them. However one period a week, the class has to be in the drama studio as there are no suitable classrooms in the school that are available at that time; and the administrator did not allow this class to be taught in a science lab/DT lab etc.

Another reason would be that the tutor group needs to remain in their tutor room during their selected PSHE/Tutor Time period, though this happens rarely, this happens. To avoid this administrators would allocate the tutor group a room that is available during their supposed tutor time period.