Comparative Analysis of Mathematically Optimized Examination Timetables Using Student–Teacher Difficulty Ratings: An A Level Exploratory Study

Making examination timetables involves two factors: one a balance of institutional constraints, and the other an assessment of the difficulty of preparing subjects. Based on the author's previous five-subject mathematical optimization investigation [1] this paper gives an opinion about how minimum-score examination orders are influenced by the difficulty rating of the students and teachers. The 35 response vectors are anonymized, with ratings on a 1-5 scale for Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science and English. A Python version compared 120 valid examination orders for each respondent (4,200 evaluations), found individual and group minima, and automatically tested the results of the calculations. Physics had the highest combined mean rating (4.66) while English had the lowest (2.89). The summed model scores of the 35 responses show a decrease of 7.71% from the original baseline scores, with the minimum score of 1,963. There are two reverse order timetables with that minimum M–CS–C–E–P and P–E–C–CS–M. Teacher only aggregate optimisation yields another pair of minimum score schedules, which are sensitive to group specific rating. These results are an exploratory member of the respondent group, and difficulty assessments are not direct measures of timetable preferences, student stress, and/or academic performance.