My data science dream: teacher aide scheduling
A Queensland state high school wish list
High school timetabling is incredibly complex, so it stands to reason that teacher aide scheduling is similarly complex. While OneSchool contains a module specifically for teacher aide scheduling, it is overly clunky and leaves a lot to be desired.
This means that most schools are using manual applications like Microsoft Excel or Word which don’t articulate to OneSchool to auto-populate data.
Below are some of my thoughts around what would make an effective scheduling system:
Constraints
Different periods - most state high schools have 4 periods per day.
Different rooms - classes are held in different rooms across the school.
There may also be room changes (e.g. for maintenance).
Different teachers - each class is taught by a different teacher (which is sometimes a substitute teacher).
Teacher aide - many teacher aides work part-time, on contract, or as casuals.
There are different teacher aide levels of responsibility/tasks. It isn’t appropriate for all teacher aides to do all tasks.
There are different teacher aide specialisations (e.g. woodwork).
Incompatibles for example, a teacher aide and their child cannot work in the same class due to conflict of interest.
Hierarchy of priority classes/students - there are classes that must be supported before others. These priorities can also change.
Exam/assessment support - additional support provided which may override regular class support.
Training and testing - teacher aides may need to be taken off the roster to fulfil training requirements or to assist in testing student levels.
Student variability - not all students with disabilities will require teacher aide support.
Students with disabilities are provided adjustments according to 4 levels: extensive, substantial, supplementary and support within quality differentiated teaching practice per NCCD guidelines.
Some students may be absent for the day.
Events - excursions, athletic carnival, camps etc.
School flexibility - every school is different, has their own strategies/priorities/stakeholders and organises their teacher aides in a slightly different way.
Benefits of improved scheduling
Less workload for managers who spend substantial time on the roster
If this administrative task is alleviated, managers will have more time for strategic planning, processes, reporting and managing teacher aide feedback, and development.
Less stress and more stability for teacher aides
If there is more stability in their roster, teacher aides are better able to prepare for classes/students, ensuring more impactful support.
Evidence-based decision-making
A scheduling system could allow for the tracking of hours of support per student, by teacher aide. When compared to success markers (i.e. assessment results), this may highlight where additional support needs to be given, or additional training needs to be undertaken by teacher aides.
More accurate scheduling
Auto-populating details like the room, the class, students who require support ensures less workload for teacher aides double-checking.
Eliminates bias
If the system schedules the roster based on hard and soft constraints, there is much less room for accusations of bias or bullying.
Better financial and staff decision-making
Schools could identify teacher aide staffing requirements AND the levels required, maximising funding and minimising overspending.
If you are a data science extraordinaire and have suggestions/thoughts, feel free to contact me at teacheraideqld@gmail.com
For those in the profession, if you have an amazing system/template, I would LOVE to hear from you too!
And for those of you new to teacher aide scheduling, here are a few places to start:
Scheduling-123 is a free template created by ex-IBM engineer Bill Hladik.
The template will need substantial modification to be applicable for high schools.
Teacher aide scheduling is an example of a nursing scheduling problem in computer science.
Explore the added functionality of Power Pivot/Power Query in Microsoft Excel