How to make a class routine for a school or college in Bangladesh

What do you need before you start?

A class routine is a grid of days and periods for every section, and it is only as good as the facts behind it. Gather these before placing anything:

1. The working week. Sunday to Thursday or Saturday to Thursday, and the number of periods a day, with bell times.
2. Shifts. If the campus runs a morning and a day shift, they share teachers, rooms and labs, so they must be planned together.
3. Sections and subjects. For each section, how many periods a week each subject needs.
4. Teachers. Which subjects each can teach, which classes, the maximum periods a week and the longest run of consecutive periods.
5. Rooms and labs. How many there are, and which subjects need them.
6. Special rules. Everything in the next section.

What constraints make a Bangladeshi routine hard?

Most of the difficulty is in rules a generic timetable template does not have.

Constraint	What it means in practice
Teacher capacity	A weekly maximum per teacher, and a limit on consecutive periods
Subject eligibility	A teacher takes only the subjects and classes they are qualified for
Rooms and labs	A room or lab cannot hold two sections at once
Lab blocks	A practical needs two or more consecutive periods, placed together
Alternate-week subjects	A subject that runs in weeks 1 and 3, or 2 and 4, still holds its slot every week
Religion classes	One section splits by faith into parallel groups with different teachers at the same time
Merged sections	Two or more sections join for a common class
Class teacher	The class teacher takes the first period
Two versions	The Bangla and English versions share teachers and rooms

In what order should you place them?

Place the most constrained items first, because they have the fewest legal slots. A routine that starts with ordinary periods leaves no room for the awkward ones.

1. Fix the grid: days, periods and shifts.
2. Place the class teacher’s first period for every section.
3. Place lab blocks, since they need consecutive free periods and a free lab.
4. Place religion classes and other parallel groups, where several teachers must be free at the same moment.
5. Place merged sections, which need several sections free together.
6. Place alternate-week subjects, remembering they hold the slot every week.
7. Fill the ordinary periods, spreading each subject across the week.
8. Check: no teacher, room or lab twice in a period; no teacher over their weekly maximum; every section has the periods each subject needs.

Spread heavy subjects across days where you can, and avoid giving one teacher a long unbroken run. These are preferences, so relax them before you relax a hard rule.

How do you keep teachers from clashing across sections?

Keep a single record of each teacher’s commitments across every section and shift. Plan section by section if you must, but write each assignment to that shared record at once and reserve the periods still owed. Without it, a teacher who had room when chosen is drained by the next section. Most hand-made clashes come from separate sheets nobody compared.

How do you handle teacher leave and substitutes fairly?

Work from a rule, not from memory:

1. List every period the absent teacher would take on those dates.
2. For each, consider only teachers who are free, can teach that subject and class, and are within their weekly period and substitution limits.
3. Among them, choose the teacher with the fewest classes that week.
4. Add the new period to that teacher’s load before choosing the next, so a multi-day leave is spread across colleagues.
5. Tell the teacher in time. Not everyone has dependable internet, so an SMS or a phone call may still be needed.

Why must the weekly routine be mapped onto the calendar?

Because the weekly routine is a template, not a record. Class tests, term exams and holidays change what happens on a date, and alternate-week subjects mean week 1 and week 2 differ. To answer “what is on next Tuesday?”, expand the template across every working date of the year and apply the calendar to it. Once a date has passed, keep it as it was, so the record shows what was really scheduled. It also lets students and guardians see ahead, and lets a teacher tie a lesson plan to actual dated periods.

Do you need Bangla and English versions of the routine?

If you run both mediums, yes, and teachers and families will read the version they are comfortable with. Build the routine once and produce both from the same data, rather than typing a second copy that will drift.

Where does software help?

On paper, a large campus takes weeks, and every staffing change means checking the whole grid again. Software helps most with three things: checking every teacher, room and lab at once; giving the same routine for the same inputs, so a rerun shows only the differences; and carrying the weekly routine through the calendar and into substitutes. AutoRoutine is our class routine software and handles the constraints above. It is in use at a school and college in Saidpur, described in how we built it. It is ৳12 per student a month on its own. A small school with one section per class and a few teachers can reasonably keep doing this on paper once a year.