How to make an exam date sheet with times and rooms

The date sheet is usually built in a spreadsheet a week before exams start. Someone in the exam office copies subjects across, moves papers around until no class has two on the same morning, and then finds out the hall cannot hold Grade 9 and Grade 10 together. A corrected version goes to parents, and then another. SkoolBro now keeps the date, the times and the room on each paper and checks them as you go, so clashes show up while you plan.

How a paper is set up

In SkoolBro, an exam (for example "Mid-term, November") is made of papers. Each paper is one subject for one class or section, such as Grade 8 Mathematics. Each paper now has:

• a date,
• a start time and an end time,
• a room.

Marks entry, grading scales and report cards work as before. The new fields are about when and where each paper is written.

Step 1: add your rooms and their seats

Rooms are added under Timetable, the same rooms you use for lessons. Give each room the number of seats it has for an exam. A classroom might seat 35, and a main hall with single desks might seat 180. Take the figure from a real count of desks spaced for exams, because a room that holds 40 for a lesson often holds fewer for an exam.

If you use a hall only for exams, add it as a room too. It does not need to appear in any lesson timetable.

Step 2: give each paper a date, times and a room

Open the exam and work through its papers. For each one, set the date, the start and end time and the room. Two rules are checked every time you save.

A class writes one paper at a time

If Grade 7 already has English from 9:00 to 11:00 on Monday, SkoolBro refuses a Grade 7 Science paper that starts at 10:00 that day. Back to back papers are fine, so Science from 11:00 to 12:30 is accepted. If you want a break between papers, leave a gap yourself.

A room cannot hold more students than it has seats

Several classes can share a room, which is how most schools use an exam hall. SkoolBro adds up the students sitting in that room at the same time and compares the total with the room's seats. If the total would go over, the paper is refused, so you can move it to another room or another time.

Here is an example from Riverside Grammar, a fictional school. Its main hall has 180 seats. On Tuesday morning, Grade 9 (two sections, 64 students) writes Physics and Grade 10 (three sections, 96 students) writes Chemistry, both from 9:00 to 11:30, both in the hall. That is 160 students, so both papers are accepted. When the exam officer, Mr Okafor, tried to add Grade 8 French (62 students) to the hall at the same time, SkoolBro refused it, since 222 students would not fit. He moved Grade 8 to two classrooms instead, one paper per section.

Step 3: print the date sheet

On the exam page, the Date sheet button opens a page made for printing. It lists the papers day by day, in time order, with the class, the subject and the room for each. Print it for the notice board, or save it as a PDF from the print window to send by email or post in a parent group.

You can filter the date sheet to one class. That gives each class teacher a short sheet for their own students, and it is the version most parents want.

Step 4: let families see it in the portal

Parents and students see the date, time and room of each paper in the family portal. When you change a paper, the portal shows the new details, so a family that checks the night before sees the current plan and not last week's printout. If you change a paper close to the day, it is still worth sending a short announcement as well, since not every family opens the portal every day.

A routine for the exam office

1. Three weeks before exams, check the seats on every room you plan to use, and add any hall that is missing.
2. Set up the exam and its papers, then fill in dates, times and rooms one grade at a time, starting with the largest grades. They are the hardest to fit into a hall.
3. When SkoolBro refuses a paper, decide on the spot: another room, another time or splitting the class across rooms.
4. Print the full date sheet and walk through it with the principal or head of exams before sharing it.
5. Share the date sheet with families, and print the class version for each class teacher.
6. During exams, make any change in SkoolBro first and reprint only the pages that changed.

A school with 12 classes and 6 subjects each has about 72 papers. Most of the time goes on deciding where each paper should go, because SkoolBro checks for clashes and full rooms.

Colleges, coaching centres and training institutes

The same steps work outside schools. A college can give each program's examinations a hall, and a coaching centre can plan weekend tests across batches without two batches running over one room. If you have chosen your type of institution in School details, the menus use your own words, such as test, batch or cohort. See using your own words in SkoolBro. For what happens after the papers are written, read about examinations and results and attendance and exams in one place.

What is not built yet

SkoolBro does not assign seat numbers or invigilators to rooms. Once the papers are marked, you can combine several exams into one weighted result, such as 30 percent mid-term and 70 percent final. The full list of exam features is on the school management system page.

Questions

Can two classes write in the same exam hall at the same time?

Yes. Several classes can share a room as long as the students sitting there at the same time fit in the room's seats. If they would not fit, SkoolBro refuses the paper and tells you why.

Can one class have two papers on the same day?

Yes, as long as they do not overlap. A paper from 9:00 to 11:00 and another from 11:00 to 12:30 is fine. A paper that starts at 10:30 while the first is still running is refused.

Can SkoolBro combine marks from several exams into one weighted result?

Yes. Add a weighted result under Exams, choose the exams and give each one its share, for example 30% for the mid-term and 70% for the final. See the guide on combining exams into a weighted result.