How to Make a School Timetable: Step-by-Step Guide

To make a school timetable, decide the school days and number of periods, set the first bell, lesson length and breaks, list every subject with its periods per week and teacher, spread the subjects across the week, and print the result. A free timetable maker can fill the period times and distribute subjects automatically, so you only check and adjust.

Make a class timetable in seven steps

1. Collect the facts: school days, start and finish time, lesson length, break and lunch times, and the weekly periods required for each subject.
2. Open the timetable maker and choose a week format — Monday–Friday, Monday–Saturday, Sunday–Thursday, A/B days or a two-week rotation.
3. Enter the school name, class or section, academic year and class teacher.
4. Set the first period start, period length, short break and lunch, then click Auto-fill period times. Tick Break row on any row that is a break.
5. List the subjects one per line as Subject, periods per week, Teacher and click Generate timetable. Shuffle until the balance looks right.
6. Check the rules that matter in your school: no subject twice in a row, heavy subjects in the morning, practical lessons as double periods, teachers not double-booked.
7. Choose A4 or A3, download the PDF for printing, a PNG for sharing and a CSV for Excel or Google Sheets.

What a good school timetable includes

• The class or section, the class teacher and the academic year.
• Days of the week across the top and numbered periods down the side.
• Start and end time for every period, in 12-hour (AM/PM) or 24-hour format.
• Break and lunch rows that are clearly different from lessons.
• The subject in each period, optionally with the teacher and room.
• One colour per subject so younger pupils can read it at a glance.

How to balance subjects across the week

Start from the weekly allocation: if Mathematics has six periods in a five-day week, one day gets two — ideally not back-to-back. Spread languages and maths evenly, keep at least one day between lessons of subjects with two or three periods, and place physical education, art and music after lunch or after a demanding block. The smart auto-generate option applies these rules — maximum periods per day, avoid repeats in a row and keep the cells you typed — and reports how many periods each subject received.

Teacher timetables and avoiding clashes

A class timetable shows one class across the week; a teacher timetable shows one teacher across every class. Build the class timetables first, then copy each teacher’s lessons into a teacher timetable to check that nobody is in two rooms at once. For a whole school with many shared teachers and rooms, dedicated scheduling software is worth it; for a single class, a department or a small school, a visual timetable maker is faster and easier to share.

Period length and bell times

Typical lessons are 35–45 minutes in primary school and 45–60 minutes in secondary school; block schedules use 80–90 minutes. Write the times on the timetable — pupils and parents ask “what time is lunch?” more than any other question — and keep the format consistent with local practice: AM/PM in the United States, Canada, Australia and the Philippines, 24-hour in most of Europe, the Middle East and India.

Print and display

Print the class timetable on A4 landscape for a desk or notebook and A3 for the classroom wall. On a smart board or projector, the live timetable view highlights the current period and counts down to the next lesson. Keep a CSV copy so next term’s timetable starts from this one.

Ready to build yours? Open the free timetable maker →

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