A timetable held together with sticky notes
Your weekly timetable is a spreadsheet printed and pinned in the office. Your senior instructor teaches jumping and advanced flat. Two others take groups and beginners. A freelance instructor comes in on Saturdays. A student helper leads on the lead rein lessons.
When the senior instructor goes on a course for three days, you need to move her private clients, find someone to take her jumping lessons and tell the riders. The spreadsheet does not know who can teach what, so you work it out from memory and a lot of phone calls.
Then the freelance instructor texts on Thursday to say she can do Sunday this week instead of Saturday, and the student helper has exams for a fortnight. Each change is small. Together they mean the printed timetable is out of date by Tuesday, and the only accurate version is in your head.
Why instructor planning is fiddly
Instructor timetabling combines several things a spreadsheet does not understand well.
- Instructors are qualified or approved by you for different lesson types and levels.
- Many work part-time or freelance, with availability that changes week to week.
- Some riders expect a particular instructor.
- Hours need to be recorded for pay or invoices from freelancers.
- Cover for illness has to come from someone able to teach that lesson.
When the timetable breaks
When cover cannot be found, lessons are cancelled and riders are disappointed. When the wrong instructor covers a lesson, it may go ahead but not well. And the owner or head instructor spends hours rebuilding the week.
Hours are a quieter problem. Freelance instructors invoice for what they worked, and without a record, the school checks invoices against a timetable that may have changed several times.
There is a fairness angle too. Instructors notice when one colleague always gets the Saturday privates and another is left with the early weekday groups. Without a record of who has taught what, those conversations are about impressions, and they can sour a small team.
Timetabling that knows who can teach what
We build instructor timetabling into your lesson system.
- Each instructor has a profile: the lesson types and levels you have approved them for, any qualifications you record, usual availability and preferred hours.
- Lessons in the timetable are linked to a lesson type, so only suitable instructors can be assigned.
- Instructors update their availability and request time off from their phone, and you approve it.
- The timetable highlights any lesson without a suitable instructor, before it becomes a problem.
- When an instructor is off, the system lists who is available and approved for each affected lesson, and riders can be told of a change of instructor automatically.
- Hours taught are recorded, and freelance hours can be exported for checking against invoices.
| Task | Printed spreadsheet | Timetabling tool |
|---|---|---|
| Who can teach this lesson | From memory | Only approved instructors offered |
| Availability | Texts and conversations | Updated by instructors |
| Gaps | Noticed late | Highlighted in advance |
| Cover | Phone round | List of suitable, available instructors |
| Hours | Worked out afterwards | Recorded as lessons are taught |
Which instructors you approve for which lessons is your decision, based on your own standards and any qualifications you require. The tool keeps to it.
A week you can see in advance
The week's timetable is published with every lesson assigned to an approved instructor. When the senior instructor books her course, the three affected days show gaps straight away, and you fill them from the list of approved instructors weeks before. Riders get a message about the change.
At the end of the month, freelance instructors' hours come from the record, and their invoices match.
Instructors check their week on their phones instead of ringing the office, and swap requests between them come to you for approval rather than being arranged quietly and discovered on the day. When you are thinking about taking on another instructor, the record of unfilled lessons and hours taught gives you something firmer to go on than a busy feeling.
Is instructor planning taking your evenings?
- The timetable is a printed spreadsheet.
- Only you know who can teach what.
- Cover for absence is found by ringing round.
- Riders are not told when their instructor changes.
- Freelance hours are checked against memory.