Optional subjects and fringe periods

Not every subject is attended by every student of a class. When this is the case, it may be desirable to schedule such subjects at the beginning or the end of a half-day (in the so-called fringe periods, ) to enable students who do not take part in the subject either to come to school later, to leave school early or to have a longer lunch break

To enable the software to schedule subjects in fringe periods, mark the subject with the code Optional subject or Fringe period (under 'Master Data | Subjects'). In principle, the two codes influence optimisation in the same way but real differences can be made by setting different weighting factors.

The following weighting settings instruct the software to schedule optional subjects preferentially in the last periods of a half-day, i.e. either in the last period of the morning or afternoon, while fringe period subjects should be scheduled either in the first or the last periods of the day .

Code G has the opposite effect. Subjects marked ' (G) Not a fringe period ' are scheduled outside fringe periods.