The Cost of Manual Relief Planning Goes Beyond Hours Lost

When a teacher is absent, the school needs to make a decision quickly: who should take the class? For many schools, that decision still involves spreadsheets, timetables, messages and manual checks.

At first glance, the cost seems obvious: time. But the bigger cost may be what happens when decisions are made without a complete view of the situation.

Relief planning is more than filling a gap

A relief coordinator is rarely just looking for an “available” teacher.

They may need to consider:

• Who is available for that period?
• Who is already covering another class?
• Who has taken several relief periods recently?
• Are there other school duties to consider?
• Can the assignment be changed if another absence comes in?
• Has everyone been notified?

When this information is spread across different systems or spreadsheets, every new absence creates another round of manual checking.

The problem is not necessarily that the people managing relief are inefficient. The process itself makes it difficult to see the whole picture.

Singapore schools already have a workload challenge

This matters in Singapore, where teacher workload is already significant.

According to the OECD’s TALIS 2024 data, full-time lower-secondary teachers in Singapore reported working an average of 47.3 hours per week, compared with 41 hours across the OECD. They also reported spending 4 hours per week on administrative work.

Even more telling, 53% of Singapore teachers reported having too much administrative work as a source of stress.

The implication for school leaders is not that every administrative task should disappear.

It is that schools should ask:

Which administrative processes genuinely require human attention, and which can be automated?

MOE itself has been exploring this approach. In 2025, MOE highlighted the use of technology to streamline administrative duties, including digitising absence-document submission so teachers no longer need to manually collect and track documents.

Relief planning deserves the same consideration.

The hidden cost is decision-making

Consider two schools with the same number of teacher absences.

School A uses a spreadsheet. The coordinator manually checks availability, looks at previous assignments, makes the allocation and updates the relevant records.

School B has a system that brings the timetable, availability and relief requirements together and automatically generates assignments based on defined constraints.

Both schools may eventually arrive at a workable solution.

But School B has something School A may not: Visibility.

It becomes easier to understand how relief is being distributed, where pressure points occur and whether the same teachers are repeatedly carrying the burden. That information matters.

From administrative task to operational intelligence

This is where automation can make a difference. The goal is not to remove school leaders or coordinators from the decision-making process.

It is to let technology handle the repetitive coordination while people retain the judgement.

For schools, that means moving from:

Spreadsheet → manual checks → assignment → notification

towards:

Data → automated allocation → visibility → informed decision

That is the opportunity behind Roster.

Roster is designed specifically for school relief planning, helping schools automate teacher assignments while bringing the information needed for relief planning into one place. Because the real cost of manual relief planning is not just the hours spent maintaining a spreadsheet.

It is the decisions that become harder to make when the right information is not visible at the right time. For school leaders, that is a cost worth considering.

Already using software? That does not necessarily mean the problem is solved.

Perhaps some schools like yours may already be using software to manage timetables, staff information or even relief assignments. Moving away from spreadsheets is a good first step.

But digitising a process is not the same as optimising it.

A general-purpose system may record who is absent, show teacher availability or allow assignments to be entered manually. But relief planning involves multiple constraints that change throughout the school day.

This is where a purpose-built platform like Roster can make a difference.

Roster is designed specifically around the realities of school relief planning. It can take timetable data, teacher availability and absences into account to automatically generate relief assignments, rather than requiring coordinators to manually work through every possible combination.

It also provides a centralised view of relief assignments, making it easier to see how relief is being distributed and manage changes as they happen.

The difference is simple:

Other software may help you manage information. Roster is built to help you make the relief decision.

For schools that have already invested in digital tools, the question is therefore not necessarily “Do we need another system?” but rather:

“Does our current system actually reduce the work of relief planning, or has it simply moved the spreadsheet onto a screen?”