Year 12 Options Guide

The Options function helps you place your Year 12 classes into your timetable blocks to make sure that your applicants' choices are accommodated where possible. This guide shows you how to use this feature.

From your Admissions+ dashboard, click on the Options tab at the top.

You then have the option to either build a completely new model from scratch or reload one that you had previously worked on for the same group of applicants.

Choosing the latter prompts you to choose from a list of previously-saved models.

If you decide to create a new one, you will need to give it a name. If you decide to create different versions, you might want to name them based on the reason you are creating them. For example, if you want to see what happens if you can't run your Art & Design class, you could name it, "Year 12 Options without Art & Design".

Next, you will put in the blocks that your school uses. Click on "Confirm & Continue".

The system will pull the information of your subjects from the Subjects area. Meaning, all your imported subjects will be shown in this step. You will need to add your class codes

Note: Class codes are two-letter codes your timetabler uses when building timetables. Because schools don’t always use the same two-letter code for their subjects we need you to tell us here which codes you use.

This is also where you can set the threshold for the minimum & maximum number of students a class can support, and the number of blocks a class takes up. Once done, click on "Confirm & Continue".

In this next step, you will then specify which set of students you want the system to consider when calculating the best-fit model. You could select all your applicants or just the internal ones, or you may select those who are most likely to attend. It's really up to you.

For whatever you choose, tick the appropriate box/es (as shown below) and click on the purple "Filter" button, which adjusts the students displayed on the table. Once you confirm you have the right list, click on "Select all" and click on "Confirm & Continue".

In the Choices Options step, choose the subjects the system needs to take into account when calculating the best-fit model. Choose from Interested and Reserve subjects, Interested subjects, Offered subjects, and click on "Confirm & Continue".

Depending on the number of students you have selected, the system will now let you set the number of classes you plan to run for each subject, and will give you an estimate of the average number of students you might then see in each class based on this number of groups. Here is where the threshold you set in step 3 becomes apparent - any classes where the average class size is higher than the threshold you set back then will be coloured in red, and those below the lower threshold will be shown in blue.

 

Here in the Classes step, you can discount certain subjects by setting Teaching Groups to '0'. This gives you the option to exclude certain subjects from the modelling to easily modify the model without having to delete subjects from the entire system. This may be useful to you if there are any subjects which you are considering being unable to offer, so you can see the impact this will have. 

If you set the teaching groups column for any subject to zero, you will receive a notice upon attempting to proceed to the next step. The notice will list all subjects that are not included in the modelling.

At the top right of the table, you may also set an ‘Attrition Rate’ or ‘Drop-out’ rate for your intake. If, for example, you know that only 90% of your applicants end up studying with you in September, you could set this value to ‘90%’ instead of ‘100%’ and the system will automatically reduce your projected numbers to take this into account. You can also set different enrolment follow-through rates for your internal and external applicants.

 

The 'Download summary' button will allow you to quickly download a csv file of the subjects and how many students have chosen each subject.

 

In the Pin Classes step, you may indicate if some classes have to go in certain blocks. By clicking on "Add new pinned class", you can select a subject and a corresponding block, and add a class that the system will add to that block, and will not attempt to move when it finds its best-fit model.

Note: Some schools NEVER move their Sixth Form subjects around. If this applies to you, you may indeed add your entire timetable here and ‘pin’ the classes to blocks. The system still lets you project forward the number of students who will be happy with this arrangement, and lets you identify the students who won’t fit into this model.

Once you hit the "Confirm & Continue" button, the system then becomes a kind of chess
super-computer, working through potentially thousands of probable patterns of classes, to find the one that makes the highest possible number of applicants happy.

In this page, you are now presented with the best-fit model for your options blocks based on the subject choices of your students. There is a lot of information here, and we're going to show you how it works.

At the top right of the screen are five buttons:

• The 'Update offers' button lets you automatically publish the subjects modelled by the options module directly into a student's 'Offered Courses' list.

Instead of manually transferring the subjects to the Offer List for each student, simply click this button , type 'YES' in the pop up window, then click 'Confirm' to push the subjects to that list to be offered to students.  This allows you to make offers to applicants and include these subjects in their offer email.

• The "Re-run" button removes all of the students from the classes on this screen and will re-allocate them, again trying to attempt a ‘best-fit’. You might wish to press this button if you have moved a large number of classes, or have removed some classes and want to see if there is a better distribution of students. Normally however the software will re-allocate as you go, so it’s not likely you’ll need to hit this button.
  Note: Be aware that if you re-run the student allocation routine, any students that you had changed the allocation for will be lost, and you’ll have to redo these.

You can generate a model with some classes removed without the need to delete that subject out of the entire platform by clicking on the 'X' to the right of each class. Click on

'Re-run' button and then choose 'Reallocate Students Only'. After that, a small window will appear; type 'YES' and then click 'Confirm'.

• The 'Allocation report' button lets you export a list of students' allocations, including the subjects and classes they have been assigned to in your model.

• The "Make a Copy" button allows you to create different versions of this file, to see what might happen should you decide to remove a class, move a class, or add one.
  Before you try different scenarios, hit this button and give your current version a name, so you can revert to it by clicking on the "Load" button on the top right of the screen. You may then create another version and name it, so you have a version you can play around with.

At the centre of the screen, you will see a line of ‘emojis’, showing you a quick breakdown of how happy your students would be with this particular class arrangement.

• The first box (the broadest smile) indicates how many students were able to be placed into all of their main choices without having to use any reserves at all. Ideally, all of your students would fall in this column, but realistically, it’s not always possible to achieve.

• The next emoji shows the number of students who had to be assigned one of their reserve choices in order to be given a full timetable, and the emoji to the right of that shows how many students had to use more than just the one reserve.

• Some students might not be placeable at all. This means that even if all their reserve ones are used, they had chosen subjects that were just not possible to place them in. To find out who they are, simply click on the last emoji, and a grid will appear where you may assign the students to other classes.

• At the top right of this section, you will see a box labelled "Score". This shows you a rough calculation of what percentage of students got all of their choices. If everyone is perfectly happy, the score would show as 100%. You may use this score to help you benchmark whether or not some changes you make to the timetable are better or worse than other ones.

• Underneath the emojis, you’ll see a graphic representation of your blocks, and the system will have created a list of classes that it believes should be placed in each of these blocks. You will notice that the system will have created some tentative names for the classes using the traditional system of naming classes (e.g.: 12A/Bi, for the Year 12 Biology class that runs in Block A)
  Clicking on the class name itself allows you to see a list of students that the system has tentatively assigned to that class.

Note: If there are students in the group who hadn’t chosen it as one of their ‘main choices’, the appropriate emoji will appear next to their name. You may also click on a student to amend their subject choice if it transpires that they would like to do something else.

If you hover over a particular subject, you’ll notice that other classes of the same subject located in other blocks will also change colour. This is designed to help you easily see where the other classes for each subject are located within other blocks.

When you hover over a class, you will also notice a few extra icons:

• The "push-pin" icon allows you to lock a class into place. This is mostly a reminder for yourself to know that you shouldn’t move a class from its current location. A class will also show as ‘pinned’ if you had pinned it earlier when setting up the timetable model.

• Another icon (as shown below) allows you to duplicate a class. Let's say you had a class with 50 students in it, and have found another teacher to come in and take half of the students in their own separate class. Clicking on the duplicate button allows the system to make a copy of that class, and divide the students evenly between two classes.

• The "magic wand" icon allows you to test if another block might better suit a particular class. While the system has already put a class in the BEST location, we know that there are times when you will need to move the class out of this block (often because of a staffing clash). If you hit on this button, the system will then quickly calculate which other blocks would then be best, and will show you the result. You may then move the class to another block by specifying which one the system should move it to.

• Should you wish to delete a class from the model, click on the "X" to the right of each class. The system then removes the students from this class, and the number of unhappy students at the top will probably increase a little bit.

• At the bottom of each block’s column is the "Add new class" button which you can press to add a new class to a block.

Note that you will probably spend several days working on this model. Before enrolment day though, you will want to send this model to the enrolment part of Admissions+, so that your Y12 students can actually sign up for the classes that they want.

Keep in mind that up until now, this has been some sort of a projection, but on Enrolment Day, it becomes reality.

When you are ready, click on the "Publish" button (after making sure you have selected the correct model) to transfer the model to your Enrolment Day timetable in Admissions+.

Once published it will time-stamp the date and time you have finished it.