Student groups

Student groups describe who is being taught. They sit in three levels:

• a year — the whole cohort, such as Year 9
• a group — a class or set within it, such as 9A
• a subgroup — a division inside that, such as 9A boys or 9A Spanish

A lesson can be assigned at any level. Assembly is taught to the year; maths to a group; a language option to a subgroup. The level you assign at is the level the scheduler protects against clashes, which is why it is worth being deliberate about it.

The section offers two views of the same data — a columns view for working through a level at a time, and a tree view for seeing the shape as a whole. Your choice is remembered.

Each set also carries a Students count, shown as a column and editable on the set itself. It is worth filling in: it is what lets the activity dialog tell you how many children a lesson is actually for, which is the number you need when you are deciding whether a room fits. Sets arrive from a .fet file already sized wherever the file said so, and unsized ones simply stay blank rather than pretending to be empty.

Sharing: one group, two parents

This is the part that surprises people, and it is deliberate.

A group does not have to belong to exactly one parent. The same set of students can sit under two — which is how you describe a combined class, an option block drawn from two year groups, or a mixed set that exists for one subject only.

The group is not copied. It is one group appearing in two places, so a lesson taught to it clashes correctly against both parents. A copy would not; a copy would let the timetable double-book the same children and never notice.

In the tree view, drag a group onto a year, or a subgroup onto a group, and you are asked which you meant:

• Move here — detach it from its current parent
• Also place here — keep both parents, so it is shared

Only legal moves are offered. A subgroup cannot be dropped onto a year, and dropping something onto the parent it already has does nothing.

Both are undoable, because the group keeps its identity either way.

Dividing a year in one step

Building a year's groups by hand is slow and easy to get inconsistent. Divide year does it from a description instead.

You describe the year as categories — independent ways of splitting the same students. Boys and girls is one category; English and Spanish is another; the class letters are a third. Every combination is generated for you, with a live count of the groups and subgroups it will produce, and a preview of the names before anything is written.

You choose the separator used to build those names, so the result reads the way your school writes them. You can also copy a recipe from a year you have already divided, which keeps a whole timetable consistent.

First category is permanent — available once you have three or more categories — additionally creates the compound groups that pair the first category with each of the others: the boys of class A, rather than only boys and class A separately.

Two warnings the dialog gives you, both worth taking seriously:

• More subgroups make a timetable slower to build. Four categories or fewer is the practical guidance. The combinations multiply, and each one is another set the scheduler must keep clash-free.
• Re-dividing removes groups whose names no longer match the new pattern — and it tells you which, before it does it.

Changing many at once

Turn on Select and the tree gains checkboxes. From there you can move the selection to another parent, also place it under another parent, remove it from where it currently sits, or delete it everywhere.

Because a group can have several parents, selection is per place, not per group — ticking 9A under Year 9 does not tick 9A under Year 10. That is what makes "remove it from here" a different action from "delete it", and it is why both exist.

Remove here detaches one parent and leaves the group intact elsewhere. Delete everywhere removes the group itself.

Removing a group from its last remaining parent is a deletion in disguise, so it is treated as one — it cannot be undone.