It's a slight exaggeration, yes. But it's not as close as you think. The trouble is that different classes get different workloads, so while the electives like Care of Magical Creatures and Divination could 'possibly' work without the use of a time-turner, core classes like Charms and Transfiguration certainly can't.

I actually did a fair bit of thinking on this in writing up a class timetable for all houses and years to use in future fanfics that may or may not ever be written. If there are six periods per day (as suggested in OOTP, although there is general inconsistency here) then that means 30 per week. Third, fourth and fifth years (who presumably have a full timetable whilst taking 9 or 10 subjects) would thus take 3 to 4 periods per week for every class. Assuming four-house composite sixth and seventh year classes, which means 12 separate classes for core subjects, this means teachers need to cover between 36 and 48 periods per week. And then you have the logistical nightmare of fitting a timetable around known class times in canon and eliminating any student class clashes (e.g. if third year Gryffindor and Slytherin have potions together, what are the third year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws doing at the same time?)... well, let's just call it messy and leave it at that.

Yeah, I think it is a literary thing ultimately. If there were two or more teachers for each subject the cast of characters would have become unmanageable.
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(Sorry I continued the discussion in the wrong topic - I didn't read Sesc's post properly and thought it had been moved.)

 

Truthfully I find Taure's position in this unreasonable. Harry is unrelaible narrotor that is true. But he is not totally disconnected from his life.

Plus wasn't the destroyed time-turners were the ministry supply? Taures insistence every time turner everywhere being destroyed is ridiculus.
Nothing says anything that is used in Hogwarts went with them. More to point when Time Turners were destroyed it was still a school year so teachers would still have their Time turner with them. It was Ministiry reserves that went poof. Nothing says anything happened to the ones that would be on use.

 

Tasoli, you realise this is a very old thread, right?

Anyway, my position is meant to be unreasonable - Hogwarts having 800 students is unreasonable itself, and can only be justified by pretty extreme positions like unreliable narrator. My preferred approach in fanfic is to write Hogwarts as having around 470 students and to make allusions to the existence.of other teachers.

As for time turners, JKR explicitly says on Pottermore that all of them were destroyed in OotP. That was the entire purpose of the scene - to take the possibility of time travel away for the rest of the series.