What is the relationship between ICFP and timetabling?

Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP) informs the timetabling process, but is not part of the process.

We have noticed that quite a lot of schools and trusts seem to think that allocating staff to subjects and ensuring that there is a balance between staff and curriculum need is part of the Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP) process. This, however, is a timetable job and most school timetablers maintain a very useful spreadsheet that plots staff names against curriculum need and shows how the two can be matched.

The role of ICFP is not to replicate this process, but to inform the process. ICFP can provide useful information that the timetable needs:

• What FTE of teaching staff can the school afford? And the timetabler needs to ensure that it is possible to timetable the current curriculum using this number of staff.
• Is the current curriculum efficient? (Using average class size as a guide, but possibly also looking at the concept of curriculum bonus, which is related.) The timetabler needs to consider more efficient curriculum models if it looks as though timetabling the current model will not be affordable.
• How efficiently the teaching staff is deployed to the timetable? (Using the concept of teacher contact ratio (TCR) ICFP can identify timetabling inefficiencies.) The timetabler will need to review the allowances for PPA, TLR responsibilities and leadership. If it seems that the TCR is under the efficient level then the teaching commitments may need to increase across the school.

The two processes need to work together. ICFP, however, will not replace an efficient timetabling process.

It seems some models of ICFP seem to indicate that they can also plan the deployment of staff across the timetable. Our advice is that, if this is what you need to do, you use one of the excellent timetable packages available commercially. An ICFP tool, regardless of what it claims to do, will not be able to replace your timetabler’s expertise.