How to create a school duty rota

A school duty rota is a named person, a post and a time. Playground, hall, gate, corridor. If you are still deciding what belongs on it, start with what a school duty rota is. This page is the build: what to collect before you open a blank file, then the order that stops the first week falling over.

What you need before you start

You need four lists before you open a template. The staff who can be on duty, with the constraint that matters: first aid, a pupil they cannot leave, a job that means they are only used if you are stuck. The posts, as rooms and patches of ground rather than 'lunch team'. The times the school runs, including a split lunch. The term calendar, so inset days and a changed Friday are not a surprise in week two.

Decide who else can edit it. If only one person understands the file, the rota is already fragile. Name a deputy before you fill a cell.

List the duty posts

Walk the site once and write what you see. A primary often needs the morning gate, the yard at break, the hall for each sitting, a corridor, and the home-time gate. Mark first aid against a person, so you can see when a break has nobody trained. Wet play is the indoor version of the yard, written now.

A one-form entry might look small until you add the TA who is already on a 1:1. That person is not spare. Playground duty goes through those posts for primaries. Secondaries use the same method with break, lunch and late gate, and they have to sit around lessons.

Set the time windows

Use the real bell times, down to the minute. Before school, morning break, each lunch sitting, and the end of the day are usually enough. Staff breaks are not a children's sitting. If KS1 eat at 12:00 and KS2 at 12:30, those are two rows. Putting them in one cell is how the hall ends up short.

Assign people to a weekly pattern

Put a name on every row for a normal week. Rotate the heavy posts if you can, and write the rotation down so it does not live in the rota owner's head. Do not use 'Team A'. People will still come to the office and ask who that is on Thursday.

Check clashes while you assign, not after the first complaint. A person cannot be on the gate and in the hall at the same time. A person who teaches, or who has PPA, is not free in that window. If you import a teaching timetable later, this is the check duty rota software repeats every morning. On paper, you do it once with a pencil and then again every time someone is off.

Lunch sittings

Reception, KS1 and KS2 are staggered because the hall is not big enough, and because the supervision is different. Midday supervisors often carry the sittings. TAs carry the parts that need someone who knows the class. If those two jobs share a name and a clock time, one of them will be dropped. Give each sitting its own rows before you try to be clever with colour.

Publish one copy

When the week is agreed, send one PDF or pin one printout. Say which one is live. A shared drive with three files called final is not published. Staff who will not log in to anything still need the sheet: email is enough. If you later use a board, the same rule holds. Publish after the last change, not after the first draft.

Keep the weekly pattern. The daily copy is what you amend. Do not start a new spreadsheet because Tuesday went wrong.

When someone is off

Log the absence, find someone who is free and allowed to take the post, tell them, and publish the day again. The weekly pattern stays. How to plan school cover is that morning in order. The mistakes that hurt are a second printout that does not match the email, and a swap that pulls the only first-aider off the yard.

Mistakes that show up by half term

• No count of who has done the heavy posts, so the same three people always have the gate
• No second person who can edit the file
• Wet play left as a verbal plan
• Yesterday's printout still on the wall after a change
• A template written for a generic primary, with none of your 1:1s on it

If you want the week in software rather than in a file, the 30-day trial uses your own staff and posts. The setup can read a pasted rota and draft the board. You still check it before anyone sees a PDF.

Check the first real week

Do not judge the rota on a quiet Monday. Wait until someone is off. If the deputy can amend the day without phoning the owner, the file is fit to keep. If they cannot, the colours only make sense to the person who chose them. Walk the yard once at break and once at lunch and see whether the names on the sheet are the adults who are standing there. A mismatch is a publishing problem: two copies, or a copy nobody opened.

Also count the heavy posts. If the same three people have the gate every day, the rotation you meant to write did not get written. Fix that in week two, not in the summer, when those three are the ones who leave. A primary that only discovers this in July has spent a year calling it bad luck.

Related

• Playground duty rota: templates for primaries
• A school duty rota policy you can edit
• How to manage teacher absences

Start a 30-day trial on your own school. No card.