OffTimetable News

When I first ran our arts week, we offered 31 activities to 412 children over 5 days. We printed out a description of all 31 activities and distributed them round the school. The children could choose 5 first choices and five second (‘reserve’) choices. I got (most) of the slips back, and found myself entering 412 x 31 pieces of information (4402 ‘choices’).

What a mess. Obviously the popular courses were very over subscribed. And how should you allocate a course when their first choice wasn’t met, but they are busy on the days when their second and third choices are running ?  Aggghhh . . . . help !

It took me about 40 hours over 6 weeks to sort everything out. And then I had to produce lists for each day telling the class teachers where our pupils should be. And of course, anybody running an activity wanted a register. Oh, and the office wanted an alphabetical list of the location of each child for each day . . . . . .