If there is one thing all educational centers (at least in Spain) have in common, it’s the need to have well-organized school guards. Schools must be well-prepared for the absence of any teacher, as well as having a system for monitoring students during recess.
However, managing school guards is often not easy, and having a tool that assists in this process can be essential.
In this post, we will explore what school guards are (and the different types), the common challenges schools face when managing them, and how tools like Additio App can help manage them efficiently. Keep reading!
What Are School Guards?
In the Spanish education system, there are two types of school guards: classroom guards and recess guards.
- Classroom guards ensure the smooth running of the school if there is an extraordinary cause. Schools assign duty teachers for each teaching hour, who are responsible for groups of students who do not have a teacher due to any reason. This measure helps maintain normalcy in the classroom and ensures the smooth functioning of the school. In this type of duty, the absent teacher usually leaves tasks or exercises for students to work on in class.
- Recess guards are where designated teachers supervise student behavior during recess and prevent any incidents, both in the playground and in the corridors or classrooms.
Common Challenges in Managing School Guards
When organizing school guards, schools and their administrative teams face some challenges that are worth considering:
- Difficulty in coordinating and organizing teachers’ schedules with guards: When scheduling the school’s timetable, if an optimal tool isn’t used, it can be difficult to know which teachers have free hours and to balance their minimum guards with the rest of their classes.
- Lack of visibility regarding available teachers for guards : Another challenge that schools often face is the lack of visibility over which teachers are available for each duty. This makes it difficult to manage the internal processes of the school effectively.
- Extra duty load: Without a tool that efficiently helps manage school guards , it may lead to an uneven distribution of guards among teachers, assigning more hours to some or having either too few or too many teachers available at a given time.
- Inefficient manual process: If the process of assigning guards is done manually, it can lead to errors and inefficient management of these guards . Additionally, it requires time, both to organize the guards and to resolve any mistakes.
- Difficulty in making real-time adjustments: Another challenge schools face is the difficulty of making last-minute changes to the duty schedule when a teacher is unavailable, especially if the schedule has been created manually.
Benefits of Implementing Digital Tools for Managing School Guards
Faced with the challenges mentioned above, schools must look for ways to reduce the time spent organizing school guards, while also minimizing errors and optimizing the distribution of these guards among the teaching staff. One way to do this is by implementing digital tools that automate this process, such as Additio App’s timetable generator.
Using tools like Additio App’s timetable generator offers several key benefits:
- Automated process: Thanks to specialized digital tools like Additio App’s timetable generator, the time spent managing guards is reduced by automating the entire process. By considering criteria such as teacher workload, time slots, and other circumstances, it provides the best distribution.
- Real-time visibility: You can quickly and easily see which teachers are on duty at any given moment, enabling fast decision-making and assigning teachers to classes without an available teacher.
- Improved internal communication: Tools like Additio App significantly enhance internal communication between teachers and administrative staff. Administrators can quickly inform teachers about their guards and which classrooms they are assigned to.
- Time-saving and error reduction: By automating these tasks, the administrative workload is reduced. Additionally, these tools help minimize human error by finding the best solution to meet the needs and circumstances of each school.
Additio App Helps You Improve School Duty Management at Your Educational Center
As mentioned earlier, Additio App offers a powerful AI-based timetable generator that makes it very easy to manage school guards.
With the tagging system of Additio App’s timetable generator, you can create guards for teachers, assigning them a customized duration. The timetable generator, taking into account teachers’ scheduling constraints, will assign guards in the available slots in their schedules.
If a teacher is absent from a class, you simply need to filter by guards in the general schedule to see which teachers are available to cover the absence. This process is quick and intuitive, greatly improving the manual process that many schools currently use.
By using this tool, errors and time spent managing guards are reduced, leading to optimal results in the distribution of guards , taking into account workload, scheduling limitations, and other factors.
Some schools, like Escola d’Hosteleria i Turisme de Girona and Cangas del Narcea, are already using Additio App to manage their guards and are seeing very positive results that have significantly improved their internal processes.
Would You Like to Improve School Duty Management at Your Educational Center?
If you think your educational center could improve its processes for creating, organizing, and managing school guards , you’re in the right place. We believe that Additio App’s timetable generator could be a great fit to solve these challenges. Want to learn more?
And if you’d like to stay updated on the latest news we’re releasing, don’t forget to follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.
Remember, with Additio App, you can carry out competency-based assessments that put students at the center of learning, keeping them informed about their progress and helping them identify areas for improvement and strengths.
More than 150 features accompany you to enhance your teaching and the learning of your students. You can try the tool for free with the Additio Starter plan, which gives you access to most features and lets you see how well the platform meets your needs.
