Staffing planner
Work out how many teachers each department needs next year, so you hire enough people and no more. It works for primary, secondary or a whole school: enter your timetable, grades, subjects and staff, and the planner shows each team’s gap.
Everything stays in your browser. Nothing is sent to Human Principals.
New here? Load the example school to see how it works, then start a new plan with your own grades, subjects and staff.
1School and timetable
2Grades
List every grade with the number of students you expect next year.
3Departments and subjects
Add each department and the subjects it teaches. For each grade, enter the lessons per cycle. Leave it empty if that grade doesn’t take the subject.
4Responsibilities
List the roles that take teachers out of the classroom, such as head of department, homeroom teacher, coach or exams officer. Say how much teaching each one replaces, as lessons per cycle or as a percentage of a full-time load. You’ll give them to teachers in the next step.
5Teachers
List your teachers for next year, including anyone already offered a post. Tick To hire for posts you still need to fill, and use a placeholder name such as Maths 1. Add any responsibilities each teacher holds.
6Results
Made with the Human Principals staffing planner at humanprincipals.com.
How the numbers work
For each subject and grade, the planner divides the students by your largest class size and rounds up to get the number of classes. Grades in the same combined group are added together first, and each level is counted on its own.
In homeroom grades, usually primary or elementary, each class has its own class teacher. The planner counts those teachers per class, so 3 Grade 2 classes need 3 homeroom teachers, plus any co-teachers you set. Specialist lessons such as PE, music and languages are counted the same way as secondary subjects, taught to the homeroom classes.
Classes multiplied by lessons per cycle gives the lessons a department has to teach. The timetable buffer is added on top, because no real timetable fits every lesson perfectly.
Each teacher can teach their FTE multiplied by the full-time load, minus the lessons their responsibilities replace. A responsibility set as a percentage is a percentage of a full-time load, so 10% of a 44-lesson load is 4.4 lessons. With a full-time load of 44, a 0.4 teacher with no responsibilities teaches about 17 lessons per cycle. If a teacher works across departments, their lessons are shared out by the percentages you set.
If your school has more than one division, such as Elementary and Secondary, each has its own timetable and full-time load. A department that teaches in both adds up its FTE from each, so a music teacher shared between them is counted properly.
The lessons a department still needs, divided by the full-time load, is the FTE you need to hire. It is rounded up to your chosen step so you’re never short. A department only shows as overstaffed when it has at least one full step more than it needs.
This is a staffing model, not a timetable. It tells you how many teachers each department needs. Who teaches which class, and when, is still a job for your timetabler.