Faringdon Community College is a large comprehensive school in Oxfordshire, with over 1400 pupils on roll and approximately 30 teaching assistants. It has around 40 students with EHCPs (Education, Health and Care Plan) and that number is growing.

The scheduling (and frequent re-allocating) of teaching assistants had become an increasingly laborious and complex process within the school. For the last few years, the Inclusion Managers have relied on an Access database system that the school had developed, which, for a variety of reasons,  was no longer fit for purpose and a more efficient and modern approach was needed.

During the 2022/23 academic year, FCC became one of the first few schools to actively use TA Timetabler. It very quickly transformed the way TAs were allocated to lessons, giving the Inclusion managers in school much greater control in ensuring TAs were deployed as effectively as possible. 

The link from TA Timetabler to the school’s MIS and the daily automated sync has helped the SEND team ensure that TA timetables remain up to date and are quickly adjusted to reflect any changes to class timetables or pupils’ class allocations.

Daily absences of either TA staff members or students with EHCPs can now be handled in a matter of minutes, saving time every day and ensuring TA resources are always allocated efficiently.

The school has frequently emailed updated class allocations and pupil information to its TAs using TA Timetabler and is now saving significant time on these administrative tasks every week.

At the time of writing (July 2023), FCC’s Inclusion Managers are making a few adjustments to pupil requirements and preferences and are adding in requirements for its pre-admission students, to ensure they are ready to schedule the TAs as effectively as possible at the start of the new academic year in September.