The 3 types of educational timetables are: High School, Primary School and University. This blog will deal with the first two.
Primary School structures involve the same group of students together in a home (or core) group, with the same teacher for most of the time. At other times they are with specialist staff - Art, Music, PE, etc.
While, High School timetables, often involve a wider range of curriculum structures- usually starting at Year 7 with the "Primary" school structure and then adding more "elective" based structures in each subsequent year level. Elective based structures allow students more choice of their subjects.
The Starting point for any Primary or High School is to define and understand their Curriculum structure. Influential timetabler Paul Wood used a concept called the Curriculum Continuum to help Schools' understand this.
Software implications of different curriculum structures: