WFA Scheduling Tools — User Guide

Wallscourt Farm Academy  ·  How to use the Learning Schedule, Release Schedule, and FAB Rota

Overview

Wallscourt Farm Academy uses three web-based scheduling tools, all connected to a shared Google Sheet. They work on any device — laptop, iPad, or phone — and sync automatically so changes on one device are visible on all others after a refresh.

Tool	What it does	Who uses it
Learning Schedule	Plan what each year group is learning each week — drag subjects into sessions, split lessons, add notes	Class teachers, TPs, LPs
Release Schedule	Record who is out of class each week and who is covering them	Office staff, cover manager
FAB Rota	Assign staff to Fresh Air Break duty zones each week	Office staff, rota manager

From this page you can access all three tools and this user guide.

Part 1  ·  Learning Schedule

The Learning Schedule is a drag-and-drop timetable planner. Each year group has its own schedule with the correct session times, break times, and staff. You add subjects from the sidebar into session cells, reorder them, split lessons for class swaps, and add notes.

Year group selector

Click the year group dropdown at the top right (e.g. Y4) to switch to a different year group. When you switch:

• The timetable rows update (FAB, lunch, and session times change per year group)
• The staff list, subjects, and interventions update
• The brand colour changes to match the year group
• The schedule data switches to that year group's saved data

Each year group has its own colour theme:

Day structure per year group

Each year group shows the correct timetable rows for that age group. The main differences are:

• Reception has no FAB break — instead they have Learning Review Snack
• Y1–Y3 have FAB at 10:30–10:45
• Y4–Y6 have FAB at 10:45–11:00
• Lunch times are staggered across all year groups
• Wash Hands and PM Registration rows appear in sequence but without times displayed

Term and week navigation

Use the < and > arrows to move between weeks. Click This week to jump back to the current week. The week label shows the term, week number, and date range (e.g. Term 2 · Week 3 · 13 Jan – 17 Jan).

View tabs — Master and Staff views

The row of tabs below the header switches between views:

• Learning Schedule (master) — shows all activities for the class. The sidebar shows subjects.
• Staff name tabs — one per Teaching Partner or Learning Partner. Shows only that person's activities. The sidebar shows interventions instead of subjects.

Adding subjects to the schedule

Reordering and moving chips

• Reorder within a cell — hold the ≡ drag handle on a chip and drag up or down
• Move to another cell — hold the ≡ handle and drag to a different day or session

Splitting a lesson (class swaps)

Click the ⇔ button on a chip to split it into two side-by-side halves. This represents two groups doing different subjects at the same time (e.g. a class swap). The left half keeps the original subject; drag a subject onto the right half to fill it. Each half has its own notes.

To unsplit, click the ↔ button at the bottom of the split chip.

Adding notes to a chip

Click the + button at the bottom of a chip to expand a notes area. Type your note and press Enter or click away to save. If a note already exists, the textarea is visible by default.

Resizing chips (duration)

Drag the bottom edge of a chip up or down to change its height. This represents the duration of the activity. The minimum is one unit (roughly 15 minutes). Use this to show that a reading session is shorter than a writing session, for example.

Colourable chips (HomeZone)

Some intervention chips (like HomeZone) have a larger colour dot with a white border. Click this dot to pick from a palette of subject colours. The chip recolours and renames itself to match — for example, selecting the Writer colour changes it to "HomeZone - Writer".

Copy week and clear view

• Copy week → next week — copies the entire current week's schedule into the following week
• Clear view — removes all chips from the current view (master or staff) for the current week. A confirmation dialog appears first.

Staff-out spans (PPA, Leadership, etc.)

Click the ＋ button next to a day name in the column header to open the staff-out modal. Here you can mark periods when a staff member is out of class:

• Enter a label (e.g. PPA, Leadership, Course)
• Select a start and end session from the dropdowns
• Optionally add a cover name
• Pick a colour — your staff colour is pre-selected when on your own view

Staff-out spans appear as coloured vertical strips along the left edge of the day column, with a label badge at the top of the span.

Non-school days

Days with blocking events (INSET, half term, bank holidays) are pulled from the Google Sheet. These columns are greyed out with a badge showing the event name (e.g. "HALF TERM"). You cannot drop chips into non-school day cells.

After-school events

The After School row shows events from the Google Sheet automatically. These appear as read-only chips — you cannot edit or remove them. They come from two sources:

• One-off events from the CalendarEvents tab (e.g. parents evening on a specific date)
• Recurring events from the EventsMeetings tab (e.g. club every Thursday)

Day Activities (TP/LP recurring activities)

Staff who have regular daily activities (e.g. lunch duty, football club) can have these shown automatically on their schedule. These come from the DayActivities tab and appear as dashed-border chips with a colour. If no colour is specified, the staff member's colour from the Staff tab is used.

Hover over a Day Activity chip to see the × remove button. Click it to remove that activity for that specific date only — useful if the person is absent or has a conflict. Removed activities are saved to the ActivityExceptions tab and persist across refreshes.

FAB Duties (from FAB Rota tool)

Fresh Air Break duties are pulled automatically from the FAB Rota tool and shown on the FAB row for each year group. The display format shows the staff member's initials and, for upper years (Y4-6), the zone they're assigned to:

• Y1-3 (lower): Shows initials only, e.g. "IM"
• Y4-6 (upper): Shows initials + zone, e.g. "IM MUGA"

On the master view, all FAB duties for that year group are shown. On a staff view, only that person's FAB duty appears.

Like Day Activities, FAB duty chips have a dashed border. Regular staff use their colour from the Staff tab. Supply staff use the colour of the year group they are covering (set in the FAB Rota tool when assigning).

You can remove a FAB duty for a specific date by clicking the × button — this stores an exception but does not affect the FAB Rota tool's data.

Staff configuration (⚙ button)

Click the ⚙ button in the header to edit staff names and colours for the current year group. Each staff member has a text input for their name and a row of colour swatches. Click Save when done.

Subject settings

Click Subject settings in the top bar to edit subject names and colours per group. Each subject has a text input and a colour picker.

Syncing

The Learning Schedule syncs with a Google Apps Script endpoint. Any change you make is saved automatically to the cloud. When you open the page or navigate to a new week, it pulls the latest data. If offline, changes are saved locally and sync when you reconnect.

Part 2  ·  Release Schedule

The Release Schedule has two parts: a viewer that everyone can check, and a planner that the cover manager uses to build the weekly schedule.

Release Schedule Viewer

The viewer is a read-only page that shows the current week's cover arrangements. It auto-refreshes every 3 minutes. It has three views:

• Week view — a grid of 5 days × 5 sessions (Before School, AM, Lunch, PM, After School) showing cover arrangement cards
• Today view — shows only today's arrangements, grouped by session. The tab label shows how many arrangements there are today.
• My view — select your name from the dropdown to see a personalised view showing when you are out and when you are covering someone

On first use, the viewer asks for the Google Sheet ID. Paste the sheet URL or ID and press Enter. This is saved so you don't need to enter it again.

Illness and event banners

The viewer automatically shows:

• An orange illness banner listing staff currently marked as ill (from the Staff tab where Status = "Illness")
• Coloured event banners for events in the current week (from the Events tab)

Cover & Release Planner

The planner is the interactive tool for managing the weekly release schedule. It has three panels:

Adding a release slot

Assigning cover

Removing a slot or cover

• To remove a release slot entirely — click the × button on the right of the slot card
• To unassign cover only (revert to TBC) — click the small × next to the cover person's name

Entitlement pips and the green tick

Each teacher card shows small dots (pips) tracking their entitlement usage:

• Filled blue pip — that session is scheduled
• Empty pip — still to be scheduled
• Red pip — over-allocated (more sessions than entitlement allows)
• Green ✓ tick — all entitlements fully scheduled

"Other" reason

If you set a slot's reason to Other, a small text input appears for you to type what the reason is (e.g. "Dentist appointment"). This is cleared automatically if you change the reason away from Other.

Cell notes

In Before School, Lunch, and After School rows, empty cells show a "+ add note" link. Click it to add a free-text note (e.g. "Staff social"). Notes appear as coloured bars in the cell. Click the × to remove a note.

Per-day reset

Each day column header has a small × in the corner (visible when the day has slots). Click it to clear all slots for that day only. A confirmation dialog appears first.

Locking the planner

The padlock button (top right) switches the planner into read-only mode. When locked, slots cannot be moved, added, or removed, and reason dropdowns are disabled. Tap the padlock again to unlock.

View tabs

• Week — normal three-panel editing view
• My view — filtered personal schedule showing when you are out and when you are covering
• Present — full-width grid (side panels hidden) for screen sharing

School event banners

Coloured banners in cells come from the SchoolEvents tab and are informational only. They appear every week automatically.

Navigating weeks

Use ← Previous and Next → to move between weeks. When you navigate to a week that hasn't been set up, it auto-fills from the Recurring tab.

Copy to next week / Reset week

• Copy → next week — copies the entire current week (including cover assignments) into the following week
• Reset week — clears all manual changes and restores only the recurring slots

Google Apps Script menu

The Google Sheet has a custom menu called Release Schedule with three options:

• Generate Term Schedule — creates Plan rows for an entire term by combining the Recurring tab with the Weeks tab
• Regenerate from Week… — deletes auto-generated rows from a specified week onwards and re-generates them. Manually added rows are preserved.
• Publish & Notify Staff — sends an HTML email to staff with a summary of today's cover arrangements and a link to the viewer

Part 3  ·  FAB Rota

The FAB (Fresh Air Break) Rota assigns staff to break duty zones each week. It has two sections: Lower school (Y1–Y3, break at 10:30–10:45, no zone breakdown) and Upper school (Y4–Y6, break at 10:45–11:00, with four zones: MUGA, Garden Room, Hard Standing, Trim Trail).

Assigning staff to a zone

Removing an assignment

Click the × button on a staff chip within a grid cell to remove that person from that slot.

Moving an assignment between slots

Each chip in the grid has a ≡ drag handle on the left. Hold this handle to drag the chip to a different zone or day. The chip is removed from the source cell and added to the target cell. This is faster than deleting and re-adding.

Supply staff and year group selection

When you drag a Supply staff member into a slot, a modal appears asking which year group they are covering (Y1–Y6). Select the year group to assign them. The chip displays with that year group's colour and shows the year group in brackets, e.g. Supply (Y4).

If you move a supply chip to another slot, the year group is preserved. To change the year group, remove the chip and drag Supply in again.

Assignment count badge

Each staff chip in the left panel shows a badge like "3×" indicating how many slots they are assigned to this week. If zero, no badge is shown.

Week navigation

Use the < and > arrows to move between weeks. Click This week to jump back to the current week.

Copy to next week

Click Copy → next week to copy the current week's assignments into the following week. If the next week already has assignments, a confirmation dialog appears.

Term rota (set and reset)

• Set as term rota — saves the current week as the default template. Any week that has never been edited will auto-fill from this template.
• Reset to term rota — replaces the current week with a copy of the term template. If no template is set, it clears all assignments.

Editing the staff list

Click "+ Edit staff list" at the bottom of the left panel to open the staff editor. Here you can:

• Edit names and initials
• Click the colour dot to cycle through 5 colours
• Remove staff with the × button
• Add temporary staff by typing a name at the bottom

Staff loaded from the Google Sheet appear first. Any temporary staff you add are saved alongside them.

Syncing

The FAB Rota syncs with a Google Apps Script endpoint. Changes are saved automatically. On page load, the latest data is pulled from the cloud. If offline, changes are saved locally and sync when you reconnect.

Part 4  ·  Google Sheet Reference

All three tools read from the same shared Google Sheet. Below is a complete reference of every tab and which tools use it.

Which tabs each tool uses

Tab	Learning Schedule	Release Schedule	FAB Rota
Staff	Yes	Yes	Yes
TermDates	Yes	Yes	Yes
CalendarEvents	Yes	Yes	—
EventsMeetings	Yes	Yes	—
SubjectGroups	Yes	—	—
Interventions	Yes	—	—
DayTimings	Yes	—	—
DayActivities	Yes	—	—
ActivityExceptions	Yes	—	—
RecurringCover	—	Yes	—
Plan	—	Yes	—
Weeks	—	Yes (viewer)	—

Staff tab — column reference

Column	Used by	Notes
Name	All	Full name. Must match exactly across all tabs.
Role	All	Controls which panel the person appears in (Release Schedule) and whether they get a staff view tab (Learning Schedule).
YearGroup	All	Comma-separated for shared staff (e.g. 1,2,3). Leave blank for non-class staff. For the Learning Schedule, blank means unassigned (excluded from year groups).
Order	All	Display order. Lower numbers appear first.
WorkingDays	Release	Comma-separated day numbers: 1=Mon through 5=Fri. Blank = full time.
Ent1–Ent4	Release	Entitlement names (e.g. PPA, ECT1).
Ent1Sessions–Ent4Sessions	Release	Number of sessions per week (or per fortnight).
Ent1Freq–Ent4Freq	Release	weekly or fortnightly. Blank = weekly.
CoverRole	Release	Role title for cover staff. If set, person appears in the right panel.
Initials	Release, FAB	2–3 letter initials for avatars.
Colour	Release, FAB	Hex colour code (e.g. #e879f9).
Status	Release (viewer)	Set to Illness to show the illness banner.

TermDates tab — column reference

Column	Notes
StartDate	The Monday of each teaching week, as DD/MM/YYYY.
Term	Term number (1–6).
Week	Week number within that term.

CalendarEvents tab — column reference

Column	Used by	Notes
StartDate	Both	Start date as DD/MM/YYYY. For multi-day events, also set EndDate.
EndDate	Learning	End date for multi-day events.
Session	Both	For after-school events: After School. For session-specific banners in the planner.
Type	Both	Blocking types: Half Term, INSET 1–INSET 5, Bank Holiday, Christmas, Easter, Summer Holiday, CLF Conference. These grey out the day.
Label	Both	Text shown on the banner or badge.
Colour	Both	Hex colour for event banners.

EventsMeetings tab — column reference

Column	Notes
Session	Must be exactly one of: After School (for Learning Schedule) or Before School, AM, Lunch, PM, After School (for Release Schedule).
Day	Day of the week — Monday through Friday.
Label	The text shown in the banner.
Colour	Hex colour code. Leave blank for the default.

SubjectGroups tab — column reference

Column	Notes
YearGroup	Leave blank for universal (all year groups). Comma-separated for specific groups (e.g. 4,5,6). Specific rows override universal rows with the same Group+Subject.
Group	Category name (e.g. Enquiry, Maths, Reading). Leave blank for no heading.
Subject	Subject name (e.g. Writer, Mathematician).
Colour	Hex colour code. Colours should be consistent across year groups.
Order	Sort order within the group.

Interventions tab — column reference

Column	Notes
YearGroup	Same pattern as SubjectGroups — blank = universal.
Group	Category name (e.g. Reader, Well-Being).
Activity	Activity name (e.g. "1 to 1 reading", "Phonics").
Colour	Hex colour code.
Order	Sort order within the group.
Colourable	Set to true to make this chip's colour dot clickable (e.g. HomeZone).

DayTimings tab — column reference

Column	Notes
YearGroup	Leave blank for universal rows (e.g. Morning Reg, Story Time). Comma-separated for specific groups. Specific rows override universal rows with the same ID.
ID	Short identifier used as a data key. Must be consistent across year groups: reg-am, s1, fab, s2, wash, lunch, reg-pm, s3, story, home, after.
Type	Either fixed (non-droppable, e.g. FAB, Lunch) or session (droppable, e.g. Session 1, 2, 3).
Label	Display text (e.g. "Session 1", "Fresh Air Break").
Time	Time range string (e.g. "09:00-10:45"). Leave blank for rows with no displayed time.
Class	CSS class for styling: fab-row for FAB and lunch, story-row for Story Time.
Order	Numeric sort order. Determines the row sequence.
HideTime	Set to true to suppress the time display (e.g. for Wash Hands, PM Registration).

DayActivities tab — column reference

Column	Notes
Staff	Staff name (must match Staff tab).
Day	Day or day range — Monday, M-F for Monday–Friday, Mon,Wed,Fri for specific days.
Activity	Activity name (e.g. "Football Club", "Lunch Duty").
Session	Time range (e.g. "12:15-13:10") or session ID (e.g. "lunch", "after").
Colour	Hex colour code for the chip. Leave blank to inherit the staff member's colour from the Staff tab.

ActivityExceptions tab — column reference

Column	Notes
Date	Date of the removed activity in DD/MM/YYYY format.
Staff	Staff name (or staff ID for FAB duties).
Activity	Activity name that was removed (or "FAB Duty" for FAB exceptions).
Session	Session/time range (optional). For FAB duties, this stores the zone name.
Type	Optional. DayActivity (default) or FAB for FAB duty exceptions.

RecurringCover tab — column reference

Column	Notes
Teacher	Staff name (must match Staff tab) or year group code (Y1–Y6, Reception) to apply to all class teachers in that year group.
Day	Must be exactly Monday through Friday.
Session	Must be exactly one of: Before School, AM, Lunch, PM, After School.
Reason	Release reason (e.g. PPA, ECT1, RA).

Part 5  ·  Using on multiple devices

All three tools sync via Google Apps Script endpoints. Changes are saved automatically within a second or two. Other devices do not update live — refresh the page to see the latest version. If offline, changes are saved locally and sync when you reconnect.

Part 6  ·  Common tasks

Adding a new member of staff

Adding a new year group to the Learning Schedule

Blocking out an INSET day or bank holiday

Changing FAB or lunch times for a year group

Adding a recurring activity for a TP or LP

Setting up the FAB rota for a new term