A Guide to Preparing Teacher Duty Rosters

A duty roster may look like a simple table at first glance, but it is a matter of fairness that directly affects the peace of the school. A roster where some teachers are always assigned to busy areas while others always get the easy spots becomes a leading source of tension in the staff room.

A good roster strikes this balance: each teacher’s number of duties is as equal as possible, the duty day fits the teacher’s timetable (no duty on their day off, or rather on a day they are at school), and area distribution rotates — the same person is not stationed in the same place every week.

• Equal duty count: total duties over the term should be balanced
• Timetable fit: duty should fall on a day the teacher is at school
• Area rotation: busy and quiet areas should be distributed in rotation
• Backup plan: a substitute must be defined for a teacher on leave

Set your duty areas according to the physical layout of your school: garden, corridors (by floor), cafeteria, main entrance and so on. Clarify how many attendants each area needs and which time ranges it covers. Defining areas clearly makes both supervision and accountability easier.

Modern school software automates duty planning. In DEPRO you define your duty areas on a map, set the number of teachers and the days; the system creates a balanced duty roster automatically, taking timetables into account. This ensures fairness while reducing hours of manual distribution to minutes.

Teachers see their duty days in the panel and receive notifications about changes. In case of leave, the suggested substitute is chosen with duty load also taken into consideration.