Academic planning

Academic Planning brings curriculum references, schemes of work, lesson plans, session plans and teaching coverage into one connected workspace. The selected class curriculum determines its planning structure.

Open Academics → Academic Planning. Use Schemes of work, Lesson plans, Curriculum and Coverage. International curricula also show Session plans.

What’s new — 12 October 2026

Lesson / unit plan PDFs for international curricula use a landscape layout with a class/subject/term summary, unit overview, core/support/extension outcomes and a wide learning-sequence table. Resources, linked scheme rows, session status and signature lines follow the sequence. Long plans continue onto further pages with repeated table headings. CBC and 8-4-4 lesson-plan printouts retain their existing format.

Session drafts can be saved while timing and activities are still being prepared. Before submission, every activity must have a positive duration and teacher/learner activities, and the durations must add up to the session length. Saved term selections remain visible after reopening a scheme. Printed schemes omit internal import notes and source paths.

Choose a class first, then search its assigned subjects. Class, subject, term and linked-plan selectors support typing to search. Lesson and session planners use the available page width.

The workspace detects international curricula from the selected school, including when no schemes or teaching assignments have been saved. Session plans therefore appears for international schools before their first plan is created.

International curricula now use Scheme of work → Lesson / unit plan → Session plans. The workspace shows the links between these documents. Lesson and session preparation use guided planners. Existing international lesson records appear as Session plans; their content is preserved and they can be linked to a unit plan. CBC and Kenya 8-4-4 retain their existing lesson-plan structure and print format.

Teachers need academic-module access and a teaching assignment. They can create plans for their own class, stream and subject, and edit their own Draft or Needs changes documents. Submitted and approved planning content is locked. Academic reviewers can read school plans and approve or return submissions, but cannot approve their own work or rewrite another teacher’s planning content. These restrictions apply on the server.

International lesson and session planning

For Cambridge, British, IB, Montessori and explicitly configured Other curricula, Lesson plans are unit-length documents that may span several teaching sessions. Session plans are the timed records for individual teaching sessions. These formats are planning tools, not a claim that each board supplies or mandates the same template.

Start a scheme from curriculum rows

In Setup, search for your class and then its subject. Choose the academic year and term. Wait for the class curriculum to load before continuing.

Curriculum scope lists the fields available in each planning row. Required fields must be completed before submission; Optional fields can be used where needed. These labels are information, not switches.

If Curriculum rows available appears, select Add curriculum rows in Curriculum scope. ShuleOne adds saved curriculum units or topics to Planning rows. Review and complete their objectives, activities, resources and timing. You can also add rows manually. The confirmation reports the number of rows added.

Link lesson plans to a scheme

Open the scheme’s Planning rows step. Creating a lesson from an unsaved row saves the scheme first. Each row shows Linked lesson plans, including review status and session completion counts. Select Create lesson plan to start with the row’s available objectives, activities and resources, or choose Link an existing lesson. A row can link several lessons, and a lesson can link several rows in the same scheme. Reuse the existing unit when it continues across weeks.

The lesson keeps the scheme’s teacher, class, stream, subject, term and curriculum snapshot. In the lesson planner’s first step, Linked scheme rows lets you link more rows or unlink a row. At least one row must remain. In Review, Manage in planning rows opens the rows where lessons are created or linked. A count of zero means no lesson has been linked yet; it does not prevent saving a scheme. Links to a Draft or Needs changes lesson can be adjusted; submitted or approved lessons keep their linked scope.

Review the planning documents

Academic reviewers open Review queue and select Schemes of work, Lesson plans or Session plans. Lesson and session lists default to Awaiting review; change the status filter to inspect other documents. Open a plan, select Review & print, then approve it or return it with a clear review note. Each document is reviewed separately.

Prepare a lesson / unit plan

The guided planner has five steps:

Unit overview — title, estimated teaching hours, overview, prior learning, curriculum links and future learning.
Expectations — core, support and extension outcomes, vocabulary, resources and adaptations.
Learning sequence — ordered phases with objectives, activities, learning outcomes and support or teaching notes. Add, remove or move phases as needed.
Review & print — check the complete plan, print its PDF, save or submit. Overview, duration, core expectations and a complete learning sequence are required to submit. Reviewers approve here or return it with a note.
Linked sessions — open or create sessions, link existing sessions, and see which sessions have been completed.

In the workspace’s Lesson plans list, select the session count to expand that lesson’s linked sessions. Manage linked sessions opens the fifth planner step.

Prepare a session plan

Select Create session from its parent lesson plan. Objectives and resources are copied as an editable snapshot. Prepare the session through:

Context — title, date, start time, duration and roll or enrolment.
Objectives — adapt the copied learning objectives, resources and next steps.
Timed activities — time, teacher activity, learner activity, differentiation, assessment and materials/resources. Every activity needs a positive duration; the total must equal the session duration.
Review & print — check the six-column activity table, print or submit. Reviewers approve or return the session here.
Teaching & reflection — after approval, record teaching completion and reflection. Clear completion if it was recorded by mistake.

A change to a lesson plan does not automatically overwrite prepared sessions. From Linked sessions, explicitly choose Refresh objectives / resources on a Draft or Needs changes session. This replaces only those two sections after confirmation; it preserves the timed activities.

Link an existing session

Existing international records remain in Session plans. Open a lesson’s Linked sessions, select an unlinked Draft or Needs changes session, then Link session. The class, stream, subject, teacher and term must match. If an older unlinked session has no term, open its Context step and select the term before linking it. A session belongs to one lesson plan at a time. Unlinking a draft preserves its content and returns it to the unlinked session list. Existing direct scheme-to-session links remain visible on scheme rows.

Teaching coverage and printouts

Document approval does not mean teaching was completed. A lesson displays how many of its sessions have teaching completion recorded. After the scheme is approved, use Confirm objective coverage on each row to record Covered or Deferred with a teaching note. Completed sessions are supporting evidence; the teacher still confirms that the row’s objectives were taught.

International exports use A4 landscape pages:

Scheme of Work PDF lists each row’s linked lessons and session completion counts.
Lesson Plan PDF includes the unit overview, expectations, resources, learning sequence, linked scheme rows and session index.
Session Plan PDF includes its parent lesson and scheme, objectives, the six-column timed activity table, resources and reflection.

Use Print PDF in the planner. Generate a new copy after changes. CBC and 8-4-4 keep their existing lesson printouts.

What’s new — 7 October 2026

Academic administrators can upload and maintain school curriculum PDFs in the Curriculum tab. Teachers can open matching documents from Academics → My Subjects → Curriculum PDFs, from a subject workspace, or from Academic Planning. The library is restricted to the school and to each teacher’s assigned subjects. The Upload PDF button opens a dialog, keeping the document list visible on the page. The dialog now lets administrators search for a class first, then search only that class’s subjects. The edit dialog uses the same searchable class and subject fields. Curriculum PDFs appear as cards with search and class and subject filters.

Find a curriculum PDF

Use Search documents to find a title, subject, filename or syllabus code. Choose a Class to show PDFs available to that class, including documents shared across matching classes. You can then choose one of that class’s Subjects. Clear filters returns to all PDFs you can access.

Upload and maintain curriculum PDFs

An academic administrator opens Academics → Academic Planning → Curriculum, selects Upload PDF, searches for a class, chooses one of its subjects, then uploads a PDF. Give it a clear title and optional description. Show to teachers of matching subjects across classes makes the PDF available wherever the same curriculum and subject code are assigned in the school; untick it for a document specific to the chosen class.

For a Cambridge batch whose filenames begin with four-digit syllabus codes, select Match files by syllabus code for bulk upload and choose multiple PDFs. The page shows how many files matched a Cambridge subject in this school and which files will be skipped. Review that count before uploading. Each PDF must be no larger than 20 MB. Files without a matching code can be uploaded individually after selecting their subject. Do not upload student reports or other personal records as curriculum.

Use Edit on a PDF card to change its title, description, subject or class sharing, or to replace its PDF. Use Delete to remove an obsolete document. A replacement does not change a scheme of work or a lesson plan automatically.

Teachers open My Subjects, select a subject and Curriculum PDFs, then open a document to read it alongside their lesson planning. They see only documents matching their assigned subject and class. If a document is missing, ask the academic administrator to check its subject code and class sharing.

What’s new — 6 October 2026

Schemes of work and lesson plans now share one Academic Planning workflow. A teacher can create a curriculum-aware term scheme, turn a scheme row into a pre-filled lesson plan, submit both documents for review, and follow coverage without maintaining two unrelated files. Academic administrators have a review queue and a separate coverage-audit PDF. Existing lesson plans remain available and are labelled Not linked when they do not belong to a scheme.

Before creating a scheme

The teacher must be allocated to the class, stream and subject. The class must also have a curriculum selected in E-learning → Learning settings → Curricula and class mapping. A school may offer several curricula, but the selected class determines the scheme’s curriculum.

If the class has no curriculum, Academic Planning stops and asks an administrator to complete the mapping. It does not silently treat an unconfigured class as Other. If the school deliberately uses its own curriculum, the administrator must explicitly select Other / school-defined.

Linking the class subject to the curriculum catalogue provides curriculum structure and may make Build rows from curriculum available. A teacher can still write a manual scheme when the chosen curriculum has no published planning content.

Create a scheme of work

From the Schemes of work tab, select New scheme.

1. Scheme setup

Choose the teaching assignment, academic year and term, then enter a useful title. The assignment fixes the teacher, class, optional stream and subject. ShuleOne reads the curriculum from that class and shows whether curriculum content is available.

The scheme keeps a snapshot of this curriculum context. A later change to the class’s curriculum or source does not silently relabel an existing scheme.

2. Curriculum scope

Check the field names and optional curriculum-specific sections shown on the screen. They change with the class curriculum; for example, CBC uses Strand and Sub-strand, while 8-4-4 uses Topic and Sub-topic.

If Build rows from curriculum is offered, it creates draft rows from the linked catalogue content. Review every generated week, date, activity and assessment before submitting. The button does not mean that every curriculum supplies an official or published scheme template:

Cambridge subjects may include published unit groupings, suggested weeks, vocabulary and objective anchors.
CBC, 8-4-4 and British subjects may reuse their linked subject tree and available outcomes or activities. This is a planning aid, not a published scheme template.
IB, Montessori and Other currently use manual, generic rows.

3. Plan the rows

Add, edit, remove or reorder rows. Depending on the curriculum, a row can use a required week, an optional week with dates, or an ordered sequence. ShuleOne saves that planning mode with the scheme so the rows reopen in the same structure. Complete the fields that appear for that scheme. The common planning information includes:

Information	Purpose
Week, date or row order	Where the work sits in the term or learning cycle.
Lesson number(s)	The lessons expected to cover the row.
Curriculum focus	The unit, strand, topic or other organiser shown for the curriculum.
Objectives or outcomes	What learners should know, show or do.
Learning experiences or activities	How teaching and learning will happen.
Resources	Texts, apparatus, media or other materials.
Assessment	How progress or achievement will be checked.
References and remarks	Source references, changes and follow-up notes.

Coverage remains read-only while the planning document is a draft or under review. After approval, use Covered and Deferred carefully. Covered means the planned work was taught; it does not merely mean that a document was written or approved.

4. Review and submit

Select Save draft while the scheme is being prepared. A draft or returned scheme can be edited. Check the final summary, then select Submit for review. At least one planning row is required.

After submission, the scheme is read-only while it waits in the academic review queue. An academic administrator can:

approve it;
return it as Needs changes, with a review note; or
add a note without changing the status.

A returned scheme can be corrected and submitted again. An approved scheme remains the record used for the term.

Curriculum-specific planning

Academic Planning changes labels and available fields without pretending that all curricula use the same scheme format.

Curriculum	Planning structure in ShuleOne	Curriculum content currently available
CBC / CBE	Grade; Strand; Sub-strand; Specific learning outcomes; Suggested learning experiences. Relevant rows can also record key inquiry questions, core competencies, values, pertinent and contemporary issues, and links to other learning areas.	Linked CBC subject trees can pre-fill available curriculum details. There is no separate published scheme-unit template.
Kenya 8-4-4	Form; Topic; Sub-topic; Lesson objectives; Teacher and learner activities. Content and assignment or follow-up fields are available where relevant.	Linked Form 1–4 subject trees can help build rows, but there is no formal published scheme template in ShuleOne. CBC-only competency, value and PCI sections are not imposed.
Cambridge International	Year or Stage; Unit; Topic or objective; learning objectives, activities and assessment. Success criteria, vocabulary, differentiation and framework objective codes may appear.	This is the only current curriculum with published unit groupings in ShuleOne. Availability depends on the selected stage and linked subject. Suggested weeks are guidance and still need fitting to the school’s term.
British — Years 1–11	Year and, where relevant, Key Stage; subject; programme-of-study area or objective; activities, assessment, success criteria and differentiation.	Linked England curriculum trees can pre-fill available statements and activities. A source programme may span a whole Key Stage even though the school schedules it by term and year. There is no published scheme-unit template.
British — Reception / EYFS	Learning area; Early learning goal; play-based experiences; observation or evidence. Weeks are optional and date-range planning is available.	Early learning goals are end-of-stage assessment anchors, not a complete curriculum. Do not narrow Reception provision to a checklist of weekly goals.
IB	Generic manual planning using Programme / Year and curriculum-specific notes. Flexible dates or ordered rows are available.	ShuleOne does not currently hold a PYP, MYP or DP scheme profile or published IB scheme template. IB concepts, approaches to learning and learner-profile fields are therefore not imposed.
Montessori	Generic manual planning using the school’s learning stage and curriculum-specific notes. Flexible dates or ordered rows are available.	ShuleOne does not currently hold a Montessori stage/content profile or published scheme template. Schools keep their own terminology in the manual rows.
Other / school-defined	Generic manual planning using the school’s own class, level and organiser wording.	No platform template is assumed.

CBC and 8-4-4: create a lesson plan from a scheme row

Save the scheme so that its rows have been created. On the required row, select Create lesson plan. ShuleOne creates one linked draft and opens it for editing. The draft carries the same teacher, class, stream, subject and term, and copies the available week/date, curriculum focus, objectives, learning experiences, resources, assessment methods and references. Curriculum-specific fields remain identified by the profile saved with the scheme.

Complete the lesson-level detail, save the plan, then submit it through the usual lesson plan review workflow. A scheme row can have only one linked lesson plan.

The scheme and lesson plan are separate records. Changing a scheme row does not silently overwrite a lesson plan that may already have been reviewed. Open the linked plan to confirm its detail before teaching or submitting it.

Lesson-plan review

Lesson plans use the same clear statuses as schemes:

Status	Meaning
Draft	The teacher is still working on the plan.
Awaiting review	The plan has been submitted.
Approved	An academic reviewer accepted it.
Needs changes	It was returned with corrections to make.

Approval confirms the planning document. It does not by itself confirm that the lesson was taught.

Coverage

Open the Coverage tab to see each scheme’s planned rows, covered count, remaining count and items needing attention. A row’s state can reflect its own coverage choice, its planned date and the status of its linked lesson plan:

Planned — the row is scheduled and is not overdue.
Lesson plan drafted, Awaiting review or Approved — a linked plan has reached that stage.
Covered — teaching completion has been recorded for the row.
Deferred — the work was deliberately moved or postponed.
Needs attention — its planned date has passed without completion evidence.

After a scheme is approved, the teacher can still update a row to Covered or Deferred and add a teaching remark without reopening the approved planning document. Lesson-plan status changes also flow into the monitor automatically.

Use the monitor to discuss genuine teaching progress. Do not mark rows covered merely to improve the percentage.

PDFs

Academic Planning provides separate printable records:

Scheme of Work PDF — a landscape term plan with school, teacher, class, subject, term, curriculum/source, curriculum-aware column labels, coverage status and signature lines.
Coverage & Approval Audit PDF — an administrator’s report with coverage totals, row-by-row lesson-plan evidence, attention items, teacher remarks and the review trail.
Lesson Plan PDF — the detailed printable record for an individual lesson.

Open a scheme and select Print for its Scheme of Work PDF. Academic administrators can open Coverage, then select Audit report for the audit PDF. Generate a new PDF after changing the plan; an older downloaded copy does not update itself.

CBC and 8-4-4: existing and stand-alone lesson plans

Lesson plans created before Academic Planning are not deleted or forced into a scheme. They appear in the Lesson plans tab with Not linked in the Scheme link column and can still be opened, reviewed and printed. They do not count as evidence for a scheme row because ShuleOne cannot safely guess which row they belong to.

Use Create a stand-alone plan when a legitimate lesson does not belong to a term scheme. For normal term teaching, create the plan from its scheme row so that coverage and review remain connected.

If something is missing

Problem	What to check
The teaching assignment is absent	Confirm that the teacher is allocated to that class, stream and subject.
The class has no curriculum	Ask an administrator to complete Curricula and class mapping.
Build rows from curriculum is absent	The subject may not be linked to catalogue content, or that curriculum may have no source content. Continue manually or correct the subject link.
A scheme cannot be edited	Submitted and approved schemes are read-only. A reviewer must return a submitted scheme before the teacher can correct it.
A row needs attention	Check the planned date, linked lesson-plan state and whether teaching was covered or deferred.
A legacy lesson plan says Not linked	It remains usable, but does not affect scheme coverage. Create future plans from scheme rows.