TIMETABLING IN HONG-KONG SECONDARY-SCHOOLS

A high quality timetable in a school can reduce grievances of the teac hing force and enhance teaching quality. This survey aims to understan d the scope of the timetabling exercise and the profile of the timetab ling process in Hong Kong secondary schools, and to investigate existi ng problems encountered. The ultimate goal is to have a complete pictu re of the timetabling exercise so as to provide a basis for suggesting solutions which will improve this exercise. We sent out questionnaire s to 480 secondary schools in Hong Kong; 173 schools responded. The re sult indicates that timetabling in a typical secondary school involves the allocation of an average of 53 teachers to teach subjects of 29 c lasses in 48 blocked time slots and 38 constrained locations under sev eral constraints. Nearly 80% of the secondary schools used computers t o assist the scheduling task. About one-third of the schools used time tabling software to generate their timetables. However, it was found t hat the use of automated timetabling systems could only complete some 67% of the available slots. The remaining part involves more constrain ts, and hence timetablers spend much effort in filling the last slots. 40% of users were frustrated by the changing constraints of the timet abling task. The survey results indicated that further research on the automation of the timetabling task is urgently needed. (C) 1997 Elsev ier Science Ltd.