Substitutions Manual

aSc Substitutions
 Table of contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1 INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
1.1 GETTING STARTED ........................................................................................................................................1
1.2 WHAT THE PROGRAM ALLOWS ......................................................................................................................1
1.3 HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS .........................................................................................................................1
1.4 INSTALLATION ..............................................................................................................................................1
1.5 TUTORIAL AND OTHER ASSISTANCE FOR USERS .............................................................................................1
2 SPECIFYING A TIMETABLE .....................................................................................................2

3 BASIC SETTINGS..........................................................................................................................3

4 DEFINING REASONS FOR ABSENCE......................................................................................3

5 DEFINING TYPES OF SUBSTITUTIONS .................................................................................4

6 TEACHER DETAILS ....................................................................................................................4

7 SUBJECT DETAILS ......................................................................................................................5

8 INPUTTING ABSENT TEACHERS AND FORMS ...................................................................6

9 SPECIFYING SUBSTITUTIONS .................................................................................................7

10 DEFINING SUBSTITUTION CRITERIA ...............................................................................8

11 PRINTING & EXPORTING TO EXCEL, HTML ..................................................................9

12 CUSTOMIZATION OF THE SUBSTITUTION PRINTOUTS ...........................................11

13 BACKUPS ..................................................................................................................................12

14 CHANGING TIMETABLE DURING YEAR ........................................................................12

ii
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

1 Introduction

1.1 Getting started

Welcome to the aScSubstitutions program, which will help you manage teacher’s substitutions over the
whole school year. We wish you a lot of success at work, and we hope you will learn how to work with
the program quickly and it will become a useful tool for you.

1.2 What the program allows

The program is designed for all types of primary and secondary schools. It allows you to:
• Input absent teachers and forms; For each absence you can specify the reason for the absence;
• Assign substitutions; Each substitution has a type of substitution
• Change classrooms for the substituted lessons
• Create and print daily substitution plans for students and teachers
• Create statistical information and monthly summaries.

1.3 Hardware requirements

aScSubstitutions needs:
• IBM-PC™ compatible computer with i486 processor or higher, 16 MB RAM, hard disk, CD-
ROM drive, and VGA monitor;
• Windows™ 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP operating system;
• Mouse and printer;

1.4 Installation
aScSubstitutions is installed together with aScTimeTables. You have to register the aScTimeTables in
order to use aScSubstitutions. You can find the registration screen right after you run aScTimeTables.

1.5 Tutorial and other assistance for users

Whenever you have problems using the aScSubstitutions program please don’t hesitate to contact us via
email or to ask your local distributor. You can find the contact at www.aScTimeTables.com or by e-mail
at: timetables@asc.sk.

1
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

2 Specifying a timetable
As a first task you have to specify the timetable that you are using at your school. When you run the
aScSubstitutions program for the first time it looks like this:

View timetable of teacher, form

or classroom.

Minimize program to system

tray. You can restore program
back by clicking on its icon.

Exit aScSubstitutions.

To add your timetable, simply click on the green icon in the left upper part. A dialog where you can
select a timetable appears:

In the dialog you can specify:

• The name of your timetable. You can write anything here. This is just for your own reference.
• The timetable file where the timetable you want to use is stored.
• Duties and time-off. Later you will see that in the substitution program you can specify that some
teachers cannot substitute at some times or have duties on some lessons. When you change the
timetable in the middle of the year you can decide if you want to define the time-off and duties
anew or use those defined in some of the previously used timetables. Since this is a first timetable
you have to use option “New”.
• The start date from which this timetable is valid on your school. Since this is the first timetable it
is valid from 1st September by default.

2
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

When you press the OK button you will specify that your school is using this timetable from 1st
September. When for any reason the timetable changes you can add or remove a timetable the same way
you have added this first one.

For more info about changing the timetables please check Chapter 13.

3 Basic settings
There are two things you can modify. First is the basic settings dialog. You can open it by clicking on
the icon :
Specify for which days you want to do the substitution.

Specify if you want to see on the startup today or tomorrow

substitutions.

Specify if you want to print classrooms in the list of absent

teachers so that they know where they have to go to do the
substitution.

The second thing you can specify is how the days match to the timetable. If you click on the absent
teacher’s tab you can specify which day in the timetable shall be used today:
Here you can specify which day in the timetable shall be used
for today’s substitutions. You can change the day with blue
arrows right behind the number. E.g. when this number is
changed from 1 to 2 then schedule for Tuesday is used for
29.10.2001. So that you can e.g. say that even though today is
Monday the school is using Tuesday’s schedule.
Every time you change this number the program asks if the
following days should also be shifted.

You can also specify the cycle that is used in this week if your
schedule uses cycles.

4 Defining reasons for absence

Every time some teacher is absent you can specify why he/she is absent. This is called the “reason of
absence.” The program can create a monthly summary of who was absent, how many times and what
his/her reasons were. You can specify the reasons when you use the 5th bottom tab:

3
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

Later we will explain how you can specify a name, short name and add a comment to each reason.

5 Defining types of substitutions

Similar to reasons for absence you can specify the types of substitutions. Each time a teacher does a
substitution you can classify this substitution. For types of substitution you can input a name, short name
and your comments. These points will be explained later.

6 Teacher details
For each teacher you can define some specific substitution information:

Clicking on the icon you can specify if the teacher has to be printed or not. Some teachers can e.g.
leave the school so you don’t want to print them in the new months but you want to keep them in the
database for the statistical purposes.

4
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

Clicking the icon you can say if the teacher can do substitutions. If the teacher is an external teacher
he will not do any substitutions.

The last icon shows this dialog box:

Overtime lessons. In some countries teachers can specify
which of the lessons are overtime. The program then creates
statistics on how many overtime lessons teacher has taught.

Duty. You can specify some periods when a teacher is on

duty. That means if another teacher is absent at that time, this
teacher is the first one to go to substitute. He/she has to be
ready and prepared for emergency substitutions.

Teacher cannot substitute at these specified times.

When you double click on the teachers name the following dialog appears:
You can define starting points for a teacher. Later we will
see that for each absence and substitution a teacher gets
some points and here we can define some starting points.
E.g. some points left from last year.

You can define a teacher’s approbation and if he is a form

teacher.

7 Subject details
For each subject you can specify if this subject can be joined or not. For example your form 5.A is
divided into English and German and the German teacher is ill then the English teacher can join the
whole form and teach them English. But for physical education you cannot join boys and girls because
each group does different activities. So you say that physical education cannot be joined:

5
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

8 Inputting absent teachers and forms

You can specify the absent teachers or forms when you select the tab with the red boy in the upper-left
part. This will show you who is missing on that particular date. You can click the plus icon to add a
new absentee. You will see screen like this:

In the dialog you can specify:

• Who [is] absent. Simply write a name or pick an item from the combo box.
• Why is he/she absent.
• When he/she is absent. This can be whole day or a part of the day. When a teacher is out on
lessons 1-3 and 6-9 you have to input two absent times for him/her.
• Long time absence. You can specify a long-term absence in the last part of the dialog.

6
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

When you want to remove someone from the absent list simply do it by pressing the minus sign.

You can scroll to yesterday or tomorrow by the red arrows next to the date. You can also press the right
mouse button on the blue text with date and select a day to which you want to jump.

With icon you can transfer those absent yesterday into today absent list.

9 Specifying substitutions
Click on the second icon at the top and you can define your substitutions for each day:

Click here to move to yesterday. Click here to add a note. This

Right click on blue text will move note will be printed on the
you to any date daily paper.

The notebook shows you list of teachers who can

substitute lesson selected in the book. Teachers
are sorted so the one at the top position is the best
candidate for substitution

For the teacher selected in the upper notebook

you can see details; how much he has already
substituted and which substitution criteria are
met.

Each line represents one teacher. Abbreviation is shown at the left side. If the
abbreviation is red, teacher cannot substitute at this time. If it is blue teacher
is on duty during this time.

Bar after a teacher’s abbreviation shows: green – he teaches this form; yellow
- he has the right approbation to substitute this lesson; blue – he is the form
teacher of this form

The lessons the teacher is teaching are purple. The lesson that shall be
substituted is yellow. The lessons that this teacher is substituting are red..
The lessons that the teacher shall have but for example form is absent. E.g.
students are on another action are blue.

7
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

List of criteria. If some criterion is met it is shown in blue color. Gray color
means the criterion is not met.

Statistical numbers: From left to right they mean:

- Number of lessons substituted this month.
- Average of substitutions per teacher
- Percentage of all substitution this teacher done
- Position in the top substitutes list

How many lessons he was absent from this month.

For each substitution type and reason of absence you can define a point
value. Here is the difference between weighted substitutions and absences.
This value is calculated for the whole school year.

10 Defining substitution criteria

Click on the icon in the right bottom of the screen. The following dialog will appear:

Here is the description for each criterion:

- Teaches the form – if the teacher teaches in that form he receives the specified number of points.
Sometimes it is handy to have this teacher do the substitution because he is not a stranger to the
form; he knows the students and can even do some work he didn’t have time before.
- Form teacher – as with the previous criterion, here the form teacher receives the specified number
of points so that he can do administration work with his form.
- Approbation – teacher receives the specified amount of points if he has the correct approbation
- Exhaustion – if a teacher is going to substitute this lesson he can have more lessons in one row than
specified in the timetabling program. If this happens the specified number of points is deducted from
his total score.
- Joining – if the teacher teaches the complementary lesson and the subject can be joined the teacher
receives the specified points
- Duty – if the teacher is on duty at the time of lesson he receives these points.

8
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

- Equable substitution – the teacher receives lessons from which he was absent – lessons he
substituted multiplied by the specified points. This ensures the substitutions are equably distributed
among the teachers.
- Max/lessons per day – a teacher can have a maximum number of lessons per day specified. The
teacher receives the difference between this maximum number and the lessons he has on that day
multiplied by the specified points. This number can also be negative if the teacher has more lessons
than the max on that day
- Assign – this criterion is used to ensure that the teachers don’t substitute lessons far away from his
actual schedule. If e.g. the teacher is teaching 1st lesson and he goes to substitute 5th lesson. Then (5-
1) times the specified number of points is deducted from his score because he has big window
created by this substitution. On the other hand if the substituted lesson is in a window the teacher
receives the amount of points specified.

11 Printing & Exporting to Excel, HTML

If you click on the printer icon in the bottom left of the screen you see a list of possible printouts. Besides
each report there is an icon to show the report on the screen , print it on printer or export to
Excel™ . Simply click on the corresponding icon.

You can print:

Today substitutions – This information is for teachers. They can see what they have to substitute and
you can also keep this paper to have printed backup of your substitutions.
Today substitutions for students – this paper is for students. Actually sometimes it is the most popular
paper in the school. A bunch of students each morning checks which teacher is absent today.
Summary of substitutions:
Specify start and end date for your statistics.

Specify if you want also the Totals column and the format. Format can be
• Hours – how many hours teacher has substituted
• Days – on how many days the teacher was substituting
• Hours(days) – hours and in the brackets also the days

Specify which types of substitution you want to have listed in the summary.

Summary of absent teachers – the same as previous; it creates a summary on how many times the
teacher was absent and for what reasons. You have an extra option here to count overtime lessons from
which the teacher was absent. If you don’t use overtime lessons you can ignore this checkbox.

Export absent and substituting – exports the daily absences and substitutions to Excel™.
Export summaries – Export summaries to Excel™.

In the settings you have an option to customize your printouts:

9
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

Header text for the daily reports for You can change the text for lessons that were cancelled
students.

HTML
You can export the substitutions into HTML format. This export will use the settings from the printer
printouts to determine which columns shall be printed and also the sorting order.

10
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

12 Customization of the substitution printouts

Similar to the customization of the printouts you can also customize all substitutions printouts. Below we
will describe the customization of the daily substitutions printout, however the same method can be used
to customize all other printouts.

Right-click on any text customizes the text font Click on the ‘Columns’ button to show the ‘Columns dialog’. See the
and size. description bellow.

Drag the blue lines to change the column width.

Columns dialog

Select which columns you want to display.

Set the display order of the columns.

Select the sorting order.

Specify if you want to group the rows with the same

value.

Set the default layout of the substitutions printouts.

11
 aScSubstitutions - Manual

13 Backups
Clicking on the icon in the right bottom part of the screen you can display the following dialog box:
Start a new substitution. This function reinitializes the
substitution. It clears all the data and prepares the program
for this school year. You have to press this button on the start
of the school year.

Create and restore backups.

Program creates automatic backups also. These backups are

listed here and can be restored like the user backups by using
the “Restore” button.

14 Changing Timetable during year

Sometimes the timetable changes during the school year. This can also happen with the substitutions. Just
as we entered the first timetable you can add more and for each one you can specify from which date this
is valid.

So when you for have an examination week and on this week the timetable is different you can simply
add this timetable from the start of the week and then simply add the original timetable again from the
start of the next week.

Also please remember Chapter 3 where we have shown the possibility to specify a different day in the
schedule for each date in the substitution. You can handle some changes with this or maybe after adding a
new timetable it will be necessary to specify this mapping information.

When you are adding a schedule to the timetable a copy of this schedule is stored in the substitution
directory. Because of this when you add a new timetable with the same file name as the previous one the
program asks you if you want to overwrite this file. So it is recommended that if you made a change in
the timetable file please also change the name of it before you add the new file into the substitutions.

12