Duty areas and time windows
Define playground, dining hall, gate, corridor, bus bay or anything else, each with its own times, minimum and ideal headcount, and whether a lead is required.
Product
What SchoolRota does. Every feature, on every plan.
Built by teachers for teachers. One board for break, lunch sittings and gate duty, intervention and PPA time, same-day duty and lesson cover when someone calls in sick, and a PDF rota staff can keep. Optional AI chat is there if you want a faster way to do the same jobs.
The product
One board. Every job the rota person does.
The screens below use your school's duty areas, staff, preferences and session names. A small primary, a large secondary and a trust of twelve schools set it up the same way.
OOakfield PrimaryToday · Tuesday 10 SeptemberPublished 07:52 · revision 3Export PDF
The board
Weekly template becomes today's board. Change what is different, publish once.
08:30Front gateDuty · 15 minJLJ. LewisCovered
09:00Y4 lesson coverMr Patel absentSKS. KhanCovered
10:30KS2 playgroundBreak duty · 2 adultsSKS. Khan +1Covered
12:00Lunch sitting 1Hall · Reception and KS1MHM. HillCovered
12:30Lunch sitting 2Hall · KS2DOD. OkaforCovered
13:30ELSA · Y3 groupIntervention · weeklyRBR. BrooksPlanned
14:15Phonics catch-upY1 · small groupJLJ. LewisPlanned
Today at a glance
What SLT and the office see.
Posts today14
All covered
Absences1
Mr Patel · sick · covered internally
Interventions3
Planned · none displaced
Notified31
PDF email + calendar feeds
OOakfield PrimaryAbsences · Tuesday 10 September2 posts affectedResolve clashes
Log an absence
SchoolRota works out what the absence touches, then proposes who can step in.
WhoMr A. PatelTeacher · Y4Sick · all day
HitsY4 lessons 09:00–10:00, 13:30–15:00Imported teaching timetableNeeds cover
HitsLunch sitting 112:00 · HallNeeds cover
How cover is chosen
Support staff before office or leadership. Preferences per person: Often, Sometimes, Only if needed, Never. Never clash with a lesson, duty or intervention already on the board.
Rules engine, not the modelSupply bookings when nobody fits
Proposals · 09:00 Y4
Ranked with reasons. You choose.
1SKS. KhanOften
Free 09:00. Knows Y4. No clash. Covered once this fortnight.
2DOD. OkaforSometimes
Free 09:00. Has covered three times this fortnight.
3MHM. HillIf needed
Office. Asked after all support staff.
-RBR. BrooksClash
Runs ELSA 13:30. Would displace a named session.
OOakfield PrimaryInterventions · Autumn 1Staff time only · no pupil namesExport
Sessions planned96
6 weeks · 16 a week
Ran84
87.5%
Missed12
9 displaced by cover · 3 staff absent
| Session | Who | When | Planned | Ran | Missed | Last missed because |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ELSA · Y3 group | R. Brooks | Tue 13:30 | 6 | 6 | 0 | Never missed |
| Thrive · 1:1 | D. Okafor | Mon, Thu 09:15 | 12 | 9 | 3 | Pulled to lesson cover |
| Nurture group | J. Lewis | Daily 14:15 | 30 | 27 | 3 | Staff absent |
| Phonics catch-up | J. Lewis | Mon to Fri 11:00 | 30 | 25 | 5 | Pulled to lunch sitting |
| PPA · Y6 | S. Khan | Wed 13:00 | 6 | 6 | 0 | Never missed |
| Speech and language | M. Hill | Fri 10:00 | 6 | 5 | 1 | Pulled to gate |
TRiverside Learning TrustAnalytics · Autumn 1 · 4 schoolsOakfieldAll sitesExport for SLT
Unfilled posts3
of 1,240 · down from 11
Median publish time07:51
Before the gate opens
Interventions ran91%
Across 4 schools
Cover asks per week Sep to Oct
Cover fairness asks per TA
S. Khan6
D. Okafor7
J. Lewis11
R. Brooks3
M. Hill2
By school sessions ran
Oakfield94%
Hillview90%
St Mary's82%
Brook Lane96%
TRiverside Learning TrustSites · Tuesday 10 September193 seats · one subscriptionSupply poolTrust analytics
OOakfield PrimaryPrimary · 31 staff0 openPublished 07:52
HHillview JuniorPrimary · 28 staff0 openPublished 07:58
SSt Mary's AcademySecondary · 88 staff2 openDraft · 2 posts open
BBrook Lane InfantsInfant · 19 staff0 openPublished 07:40
Each school keeps its own boardSign-in, billing and reporting stay central
Break, lunch sittings, gate, lesson cover and intervention sessions in one place. Draft first, then publish.
37 features · every plan
Every plan has every feature. Open a group to see what is inside.
You define the duty areas and times, whether that is one playground or six corridors. It is not a teaching timetable builder. You can import teaching slots so cover works around lessons.
Children's lunch sittings
Feeding KS1 at 11:45 and KS2 at 12:20? Add both times to the dining hall or playground and staff each one, or split a single sitting so one person covers the first half and someone else the second.
Weekly templates
Set the pattern once per weekday and reuse it all term. Change the template and future days follow.
Cover preference and grades
Mark who is asked Often, Sometimes, Only if needed or Never for duty, and let staff grades carry their own ask order so leadership are not first in the queue.
Capabilities
Tag qualified staff, such as first aiders, and require that capability on the slots that need it.
Weekly blocks
Record recurring weekly blocks so cover suggestions work around them: PPA, phonics, class cover, and named SEND or intervention sessions such as ELSA, Thrive, nurture or speech and language. Type your own name if you need it.
Interventions
The small-group sessions your teaching assistants run each week, from phonics catch-up to ELSA and nurture. See who is running what each day, record any that did not happen, and see planned, missed and ran counts by session name.
Term calendar
Mark inset days, closures and non-term dates so nothing is scheduled when school is shut.
Absence recording
Log sickness, training or appointments in seconds, with partial-day times and an option to recompute the affected day straight away.
Lesson cover
When a teacher is off, see uncovered lessons, allocate cover (including supply), and keep those choices through day rebuilds.
Clash-aware resolve
On a proposed draft, replace staff who clash with teaching or weekly blocks using clearer eligible cover, with reasons you can show a colleague.
Manual overrides
Disagree with a suggestion? Swap anyone in or out of a draft slot before you publish. Changing the live board is designed to be quick when staffing shifts mid-morning.
Only-if-needed visibility
When the only option is someone you would rather not use, the board says so instead of hiding it.
Supply bookings
Book supply staff for a date range and have them appear in the candidate pool for that school and day.
Live updates
The Today board refreshes as revisions are published, so the office and duty leads are not looking at stale information.
Morning pack email
An optional start-of-day summary to the office, duty leads and SLT covering the day ahead.
Missed sessions
Record when a session or duty did not happen, and why. See planned, missed and ran counts by session name (for example ELSA), filter to interventions only, and download a CSV. It tracks staff time, not pupil attendance.
Weekly summary email
A report in your school's colours showing what was missed and why, sent to the people you choose. Friday afternoon by default, with the day and time up to you, and quiet weeks send nothing.
My schedule
Every member of staff gets their own duties by day, week or month, on phone or desktop.
Personal calendar feed
Staff subscribe once and published duties (and optional teaching lessons) appear in Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar automatically.
Notifications
Email and in-app alerts when a day goes live, plus an optional PDF rota emailed to staff on the board so they have a clear document without logging in.
Day timeline
See a person's duties, lessons and weekly blocks together, so it is obvious why they were or were not picked.
Staff import
Bring your staff list in from CSV, including grade, cover preference and first-aid status, with a preview before anything is saved.
Teaching timetable import
Import lessons from CSV so duty cover steers away from teaching time. Supports week A/B cycles and unmatched-staff review. Native MIS connectors and scheduled refresh are coming soon.
AI-assisted setup
Paste last year's duty rota or an untidy spreadsheet and AI drafts the duty areas, times and staff list for you to check. It suggests, you approve, and it can be switched off entirely.
AI assistant chat
Included on new schools with a daily usage allowance. Day-to-day chat can record absences, arrange cover, fix double-bookings, list which interventions run on a day, summarise what was missed, and publish. Every change is previewed and approved; cover still follows your rules engine. Turn it off in Admin if you do not want it.
Exports
Day and week packs as PDF, Word, Excel and print layouts, clear enough to understand at a glance without logging in.
Email rota on publish
Optionally email the PDF (or Word) rota to staff on the board as soon as you publish, with a short message and the attachment.
Audit log
Publishes, assignment changes, imports and admin actions are all recorded with who did what and when.
Demo data
Load a clearly fictional sample school to train the office team without touching your real rota.
Roles that match a school
Owner, admin, duty lead, office, staff and viewer, each seeing only what they need. Admins can be limited to specific schools in a trust.
School login
Sign in with Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace or Okta, so staff use the account they already have.
Automatic staff sync
Create, update and deactivate accounts automatically from your identity provider, including mapping people to the right school.
Cover and calendar config
Set publish rules for teaching clashes and class-cover gaps, choose calendar sync scope (duties, teaching or both), and turn teaching timetable or class cover on or off per school.
School branding
Your logo and colours across the portal, exports and email, so it looks like your school rather than ours.
Guided setup
A step-by-step wizard tuned to your school type, with progress saved so you can finish it over several sittings.
Unlimited admin logins
You pay for staff on the rota, not for the people organising it.
Optional AI
AI for the admin work. Rules for the cover picks.
Optional chat can draft absences, cover and publishes for you to check. Cover still comes from your rules, with reasons you can explain, not from a model choosing who supervises children.
Every AI output is a draft. You see it, change it, and approve it before a single record is written, and each run is recorded in the audit log alongside the model that produced it.
What AI does
- Reads a duty rota document you paste in and drafts duty areas, times and staffing levels
- Maps a staff spreadsheet to the right fields, whatever the columns are called
- Optional assistant chat for absences, cover, double-bookings, interventions and publishing
- Falls back to built-in pattern matching if setup AI is unsure or unavailable
Where we draw the line
- Cover decisions come from a transparent rules engine, never a model alone
- Nothing is published or sent to staff until a person confirms it
- Pupil data and your rota history are never sent to an AI provider
- Your school's data is not used to train models
- AI can be switched off entirely, and everything still works
Three kinds of work, one board
Duty is not cover. Cover is not an intervention.
A break duty, a same-day lesson cover and a weekly ELSA group are different jobs with different rules. SchoolRota keeps them distinct, then puts them on the same board so a cover swap does not wipe a named session.
Duty
Gate, corridor, break, staggered lunch sittings. Set the weekly pattern once. Each day starts worked-out, and you only change what is different.
Run by · rota person · office
Cover
Log who is off. See what it touches: lessons from the imported timetable, duties, sittings. Ranked proposals with reasons, TAs before leadership, never a clash.
Run by · rota person · SLT sign-off if you want it
Interventions
ELSA, Thrive, nurture, phonics, PPA. Timetabled as weekly blocks, protected from casual cover, and counted: planned, ran, missed and why.
Run by · SENCO · TAs · ELSA
Absencedrives cover proposals directlyPublishsends the PDF and updates calendarsMissed sessionis logged with a reason
Try it with your own school this term.
30 days free, no card, full product on your own data. Set the portal up when it suits you, publish your first day, and see what 07:40 feels like when cover is already proposed.