Playground duty rota: templates for primaries
Example playground duty rotas for a small primary, a split lunch, and wet play. Copy the shape, then use your own names.
A playground duty rota names who is on the yard, in the hall and on the gate. The tables below are shapes. Replace 'Adult 1' with real names before anything goes on the wall. Swap in your midday supervisors and TAs, then cut any post you do not run. The reasoning is on playground duty. The definition is what a duty rota is.
What every template needs
A post, a time, a name. First aid marked on the person who has it. Wet play written as its own rows, with the room and the adult for each class that comes inside. If the only first-aider is also the only person who can take a 1:1, the template is already short, and adding a column will not fix it.
Small primary, one sitting
About 15 staff on duty across the week, one hall sitting, a yard and a gate. This is the scale of the 15-staff primary example.
Monday, normal weather. Repeat the shape for the week and rotate the names.
| Time | Post | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 08:40-08:55 | Front gate | Midday A |
| 10:30-10:45 | Yard | TA 1 |
| 10:30-10:45 | Yard, first aid | TA 2 |
| 12:00-12:30 | Hall sitting | Midday A |
| 12:00-12:30 | Yard | Midday B |
| 12:00-12:30 | Gate and late arrivals | TA 3 |
| 15:10-15:25 | Home-time gate | TA 1 |
Split lunch, KS1 then KS2
Two sittings means two sets of hall rows. Do not merge them to save space. The yard still needs people while the hall is full.
| Time | Post | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 12:00-12:25 | Hall, KS1 | Midday A |
| 12:00-12:25 | KS1 yard | Midday B |
| 12:00-12:25 | First aid | TA 1 |
| 12:25-12:50 | Hall, KS2 | Midday C |
| 12:25-12:50 | KS2 yard | TA 2 |
| 12:25-12:50 | Corridor | TA 3 |
Wet play
Same people if you can, different rooms. Publish this beside the dry rota so you are not reallocating in the doorway.
| Time | Post | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 10:30-10:45 | Hall | TA 1 |
| 10:30-10:45 | KS1 classrooms | TA 2 |
| 10:30-10:45 | KS2 classrooms | Midday A |
| 12:00-12:30 | Hall sitting | Midday B |
| 12:00-12:30 | Wet yard entrance | TA 3 |
Midday supervisors
They often carry the sittings and a yard. They also often have no login to anything the school runs, which is why a PDF in their inbox beats a portal. Do not give them a duty in two places at once because the grid looked empty. Check the clock, not the colour.
Problems these templates do not solve
- A TA already on a 1:1 is not spare, even if their initials are free at break
- One first-aider on the rota means wet play and a trip to hospital both fail
- KS1 and KS2 in the same yard without a plan is a supervision problem, not a formatting problem
- Staff off before the bell need a daily copy, which a static template is not
When the template is being rewritten every morning, that is the point of school duty rota software. You can paste a week like the ones above into setup and check the draft. The trial is 30 days, on your names, with no card.
How to fill one in without inventing a school
Start with the people you have this term, not the structure you wish you had. Write midday supervisors on the sittings they already do. Write TAs off any window where they are with a pupil or in an intervention you mean to protect. If a name appears twice in the same ten minutes, delete one. The grid will not warn you. You have to look.
Then mark first aid on the person, and check each break still has one. A column headed 'first aid' that is empty at lunch is how a bumped head becomes a hunt. Do the same for the gate if the gate is a road. The adult who is good with the youngest children is not automatically the adult who should be on that gate, and the template should not imply they are.
Leave a job-sharer's or part-timer's non-working days blank. A Wednesday row with Monday's person on it is a common way for a printed rota to be wrong by the second week. Wet play needs its own names even if they match the dry rota. If you only write 'see main rota' in the margin, nobody will see it when it is raining.
Publish the finished week once. Put the same PDF in inboxes and, if you still pin paper, on the wall. For the rest of the term, change the day, not the master, when someone is off. If you edit the master every morning you no longer have a template. You have a diary that pretends to be a pattern. The point of these examples is the shape of the rows. Your names, your bells and your 1:1s are the rota. If a row in the example does not exist in your school, delete it. A corridor duty you do not run is clutter. A gate you do run, missing from the grid, is the row that will be empty at 08:45.
Read a filled template out loud once before you publish it. 'Midday A is on the gate at 08:40 and in the hall at 12:00' should sound like a day a person can do. If the sentence has them in two places at once, the row is wrong even when the grid looks neat. Do that for wet play as well. Indoor posts feel obvious until the rain arrives and three classes are sharing a hall that had one name on it. Add the adults before you need them. A template you only believe in good weather is half a rota. Then leave it alone until the bells change. If you are redrawing it every Sunday, the shape is wrong. Keep last term's version in a folder so you can see what you changed, and so a new midday supervisor can see that Tuesday used to be someone else. That folder is the history.
Related
- How to create a school duty rota
- A school duty rota policy you can edit
- School staffing ratios in England: what to plan for
Start a 30-day trial on your own school. No card.