By Chi Yan Ng and Elaine Law

You know the drill; new year, new classes, and of course, new timetable. However, four months into this academic year, the timetable has changed. This is something no one at Renaissance College expected.

At the end of October, Secondary Principal Geoffrey Wheeler shared in an email to all students that there would be a new timetable starting on November 14th, the first day back from EMB@RC week. Anticipating a stronger reaction, he was quite surprised to find that “when we wrote to the parents, there were no queries, and the parents seemed to understand. Same with the students, they seemed to understand our motivation.” However, Wheeler agreed that he, along with students and staff, would need to experience a full two-week cycle before deciding whether or not this change has benefited them. 

When asked about the reasons behind the changes, Wheeler claimed that they didn’t have enough time to make a good schedule before school started. “We would have preferred to have it [the schedule] from the start. We didn't know until it was too late that the timetable wasn’t good enough. We couldn’t change it in time, and we had to start the school with a bad timetable,” explained Mr Wheeler. He knew that it wasn’t ideal to complete a whole school year with a poorly planned timetable. He took it upon himself and the secondary leadership team, which consisted of all heads of departments, to investigate whether or not this could be fixed so that all students and staff at Renaissance College could have a better academic year ahead.

Have you ever wondered how the school comes up with the schedules every year? According to Wheeler, it "starts from Year 12, where students have chosen their diploma… In Year 12, for higher level physics, you need eight lessons every two weeks. They do this while thinking about the requirements for each subject, such as “MYP English, Chinese, Mathematics, Sciences, Individuals and Societies get more time than Physical and Health Education, and the arts” to produce a well-balanced timetable for everyone. “This means that the number of lessons per subject must be evenly distributed over the two-week cycle to facilitate teaching and learning,” he said. At the beginning of the year, some subjects occurred four times in a row and then the last lesson of the fortnight happened a week later. To remove this problem, the secondary leadership team revised the timetable over the mid-term break and the EMB@RC week while no students were at school.

What do the students think about the new schedule change? “I don’t mind the change,” said an anonymous Year 9 student, and seemed to understand the reasons why the change had to be made. However, another Year 9 student, Cliff, says “The new timetable change was very sudden, since most of us just got used to our timetables. And we now have to memorise a new one, which could be a little annoying.” Another anonymous student also said they were happy about the change because their classes are now more evenly spread out.

Furthermore, the new changes meant that some students had to walk to classrooms that were very far away, causing some complaints about inefficiency as walking takes time, especially with the crowded staircases. "The only thing I don't like about it is that we have science class after lunch on some days, which means a lot of stairs to climb," says a fourth year 9 student. To reiterate, the students interviewed all expressed that there had to be some "getting used to," but they are finding it easier as more and more days go by.

The students aren’t the only ones affected by this change - What about the teachers? According to Bradley Stewart, an MYP English teacher, “The timetable doesn’t really make much of a difference for me.” He didn’t think too much of the new schedule and said that as a whole, he felt that the change made things better. Another MYP teacher said “for me, it's better because I have less full days than before, which makes for more of an even spread across teaching times.”

Although annoying for some, the new timetable is seen by most in a positive light and the secondary team hopes for a better year ahead with this change.