Non-Teaching Activities

Non-Teaching Activities (NTA)

What is an NTA ?
An NTA is a timetabled task that a teacher needs to do, in a specific period of the week, but which doesn’t involve students.  For example:
-- The Senior Management Team hold a meeting every Tuesday, period 5
-- Teachers have PPA in designated periods throughout the week
-- Mrs Jones is a part-timer and unavailable on Thursday and Friday
-- You have an on-call rota of free staff in each period (see Notes below).
Unlike 'standard' lessons, NTAs don't have a class, subject or room.
[Note: if you have come to TimeTabler from Nova-T, you may know them as NCC (non-class codes) or Duties].

How to enter them in TimeTabler:
NTAs can be entered in any of 3 ways, as:
-- (i) Special Locations (eg. for meetings - scheduled in the usual way)
-- (ii) Staff labels (eg. PPA preparation-time - as marked on the Staff Timetable Screen).
-- (iii) Unavailable periods (eg: for a part-timer - as marked on the Staff Availability screen and the Staff Timetable Screen)

Appearance on your timetable:
NTAs will appear (similar to lessons) on your Staff Timetables (Individual & 'Master').

Exporting to your MIS or Admin-System:
You can choose whether to export each type of NTA, at Step 3 of the Export ("Prepare your basic data -> Non-teaching activities").   Don't export an NTA that you think will have no meaning to your MIS, or which you don't wish to appear on timetables in your MIS.
Whether an NTA is imported into any given MIS, and how it is stored or displayed thereafter, depends on the MIS - if in doubt, please ask your MIS supplier.

Importing NTAs from another System:
If you have a list of your NTAs (and/or staff availability) in a file, you can import this into TimeTabler, so it adds them to your current schedule. To do this, go to ‘Visual Builder -> Staff TT view -> Import NTA’ (button at top-right) and follow the instructions.

Notes:
For an on-call rota or cover for staff absences, to be included in your timetable, see this article.