This facility enables you to plan combinations so that pupils' choices of subject can be accommodated. While there is a desire to provide greater flexibility to pupils regarding subject choice, it should be understood that greater choice often leads to smaller classes. Your subject choices may be fixed, in which case you do not need this facility. On the other hand you may like to experiment with subject choices without actually adopting the results.

The planning facility attempts to arrange subjects into columns in such a way that by choosing one subject from each column pupils will be able to take their chosen subjects. At the same time the program ensures that teachers appear only once in a column, and class sizes are balanced.

Begin by deciding how many columns will be required, which subjects will be offered and which teachers will teach them. A teacher may teach more than one class of a subject, in which case the teacher and subject should be repeated. The same teacher can also teach other subjects, but of course a teacher may not be present for more classes than there are columns.

You may have an idea which subjects you would like in certain columns, in which case you may fix those subjects to those columns. For schools with a large number of subject choices the time taken to find a feasible solution may be greatly reduced by fixing some subjects.

Add the subjects, teachers and fixed columns (if any) to the list in the normal way. As you enter data, a list of valid subjects and teachers will appear on the right. Once all subjects have been entered, click on the Pupil Choices button to continue.