Year plans and lesson plans: a scheme of work that counts the real lessons
Two lessons a week is not eighty lessons a year. How the curriculum, the scheme of work and the single lesson plan fit together, how to count the lessons a class really gets before the holidays, a template for each — and why a plan works better when it knows the timetable, the cover desk and the homework load.
A scheme of work turns the curriculum into an order of units for one class across the school year; a lesson plan turns one of those lessons into minutes, materials and homework. The step most year plans skip is counting — not “two lessons a week times thirty-nine weeks”, but the lessons this class will actually have before the holidays, once INSET days, trips, exam weeks and cancelled lessons are gone. In short: count the lessons from the class's own timetable and the school calendar, take off the losses you can already see, fill about four in five of what is left with units, keep spare lessons after the big ones, and move the plan forward each time a lesson is lost. Write each lesson plan so that a colleague covering the lesson could teach from it.
This guide gives a template for both, a worked example and a checklist for lesson planning software. Bildena plans this way in its Learning module; what it does, and what it does not do, is at the end.
Curriculum, scheme of work, lesson plan: three layers
| Layer | Answers | Who owns it | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curriculum | What each year group learns in a subject | The state, then the school and its departments | Several years |
| Scheme of work (year plan) | In which order one class meets it, unit by unit, across the lessons it really has | The class's teacher, often from a department plan | A year or a term |
| Lesson plan | What happens in one lesson: goal, steps, materials, homework | The teacher giving it | One lesson |
In England the national curriculum's programmes of study set the first layer for maintained schools; academies and private schools do not have to follow them, though academies must teach a broad and balanced curriculum. Maintained schools must publish the content of their curriculum for each year and subject — which is, in effect, a curriculum map. The programmes say what to teach, not how long: the key stage 3 history programme lists periods and themes for years 7 to 9 together and gives no hours, so the department decides which year meets which part. The Teachers' Standards then ask every teacher to “plan and teach well structured lessons” and to set homework that consolidates what pupils have learned.
How many lessons does a class really get?
Take a Year 8 history class with two lessons a week, on Tuesday and Friday, in an autumn term that runs from Thursday 3 September to Friday 18 December 2026 with half-term in the last week of October. Term dates vary by area, so use your own; the method is the point.
| Step | Lessons |
|---|---|
| Tuesdays and Fridays in term, half-term taken out | 29 |
| INSET day on a Friday in November | −1 |
| Year 8 museum trip on a Tuesday | −1 |
| Assessment week: the Friday lesson becomes an exam in the hall | −1 |
| Off-timetable activities day | −1 |
| Last day of term: assembly and carol service | −1 |
| Covered by a colleague with set work, not the planned lesson | −1 |
| Lessons taught as planned | 23 |
Six lessons — a fifth of the term — and none of them unusual. These are an illustration, not a statistic: take your own from last year's calendar and register. Over a whole year the same arithmetic applies. The regulations ask for at least 380 sessions, morning and afternoon, so 190 days or 38 weeks: a subject with two lessons a week has about 76 lessons on paper and noticeably fewer in the room.
Two details change the count. If your school runs a two-week timetable, count by date: a class with three lessons in week A and two in week B never has “two and a half” in any week, and a term that starts on a B week ends differently (see Week A, week B). And count the lessons that fall on the same weekday as bank holidays and INSET days — a Monday class loses more than a Wednesday class.
A scheme of work template for the year
One row per unit, in teaching order. The first three rows of our Year 8 class, with the key stage 3 period “Church, state and society in Britain, 1509–1745” placed in Year 8 by the department:
| Unit | Lessons | When | Curriculum | Assessment | Spare after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Renaissance and Reformation | 8 | September to half-term | Renaissance and Reformation in Europe; the English Reformation | Test in lesson 8 | 1 |
| 2 Elizabeth I and religion | 6 | November | The Elizabethan religious settlement | Source question in lesson 6 | 1 |
| 3 The civil wars | 7 | December, continues in spring | Causes and events of the civil wars | — | — |
Twenty-three lessons, two of them spare. With the template, a checklist:
- Count the class's lessons per term from its own timetable, A and B weeks by date.
- Subtract what you already know: INSET days, trips, exam weeks, events, the last day of term.
- Order the units and give each a number of lessons, not a number of weeks.
- Name the curriculum points each unit covers, in the curriculum's own words or codes.
- Place assessments at the end of units, clear of exam weeks and trips.
- Keep spare lessons after the longest units.
- Write down how far the plan reaches and how many lessons are still free.
- Review at half-term: are you where the plan says, and what will you cut if not?
A lesson plan template a colleague could teach from
A lesson plan is not a script. It is the short note that lets the lesson go ahead when you are not there, and that tells you next year what worked. Six headings are enough:
- Where it sits: class, unit, lesson 4 of 8, the date it falls on.
- Goal: one sentence on what the class can do at the end.
- Steps with minutes: start, input, practice, check, homework — adding up to the lesson's length.
- Materials: the worksheet (and whether everyone needs a printed copy), textbook pages, links; the answer key marked as yours only.
- Check: an exit question or a short quiz, so the next lesson can start from the answer.
- Homework: the task, how long it takes, and the day it is due.
Add one line for cover: where the class is in the unit and what to do if the room or the projector is not there. It costs a minute and saves the colleague who reads it at 7:40.
When lessons are lost: move the plan, keep the record
A plan written in September is wrong by October; the question is whether it says so. Three habits keep it honest. Record what each lesson actually covered — in most schools that is already the register's lesson topic, so let the plan read it rather than keep a second list. Let a lesson that ran over continue into the next one instead of skipping its second half. And when a lesson is lost, move every later lesson on by one rather than squeezing two into one. Then decide, with the department, what to shorten or cut: the spare lessons first, then the least essential points, never the assessment by accident.
Cover: the lesson plan is the handover
When a teacher is off sick, the cover desk has forty minutes to find someone (see 7:40 on a Monday). The colleague who walks into the room needs two things: the work that was left, and where the class is. If the lesson plan lives where the cover teacher already looks — with the register, the class list and the room — a covered lesson can be a lesson, not supervision. If it lives in a document on the absent teacher's laptop, it might as well not exist.
Homework belongs in the plan — and on the class's week
Homework is easiest to set well when the plan already holds it: the task belongs to the lesson that prepares it. The due day belongs to the class's week, which no single teacher sees. Five teachers each setting “a bit” on the same Tuesday is how a class ends up with five pieces due on Wednesday; Homework load explains how a daily cap works and why the timetable decides which evenings are heavy.
What to look for in lesson planning software
- It counts each class's real lessons from the timetable and the school calendar, A/B weeks included, and moves when either changes.
- It moves the plan when a lesson is lost, and shows who is behind without anyone keeping a list.
- Units name the curriculum's points, and the department sees coverage and gaps — a curriculum map that maintains itself.
- Colleagues can start from a shared plan; next year's class starts from this year's.
- A cover teacher sees the day's lesson plan where they take the register.
- Homework set from the plan is checked against the class's whole week.
- It prints, and the department can read it without editing it.
How Bildena plans the year and the lesson
Where it lives. In Learning › Lesson plans, two lists: Year plans, one row per teaching group with its year at a glance, where the group is now, how far the plan reaches, the curriculum lines it covers and one state — on track, behind, planned in part, no plan yet — and School curriculum.
The year plan. Plan a year has six steps: Group, Units, Lessons, Calendar, Sharing, Check. You start from the curriculum (one unit per area, in its order, with its suggested hours where it gives them, otherwise an even share of the year), from a plan to copy — yours or a colleague's shared plan, this year or an earlier one — or from empty. A unit has a title, a number of lessons, whether it ends with a class test, the curriculum lines it covers, spare lessons after it and, if it must wait, a start date. No date is typed. Bildena lays the units on the group's real lessons: every teaching day of the school calendar, without breaks and public holidays, times the group's lessons on the published timetable that run that week (A/B weeks included), minus the lessons the cover desk cancelled. The Check step says whether the plan fits — “The plan fits the year: it ends on …; … lessons stay free for later units” — or how many lessons fall after the year's last one. A unit already begun keeps its place.
When lessons are lost. The register moves the plan. A lesson counts as taught when the register has its record; one marked partly continues next time; a lesson a cover teacher spent on their own subject is not counted as this plan's. On the day, the register offers the plan's lesson as the topic, the one before it if the class is still on it, and the next two if it is ahead. A trip or an exam day is ticked under Lessons without the plan, and the units move on by one. The year map shows the weeks with breaks shaded, the units as bars, class tests and today, and flags lessons without a record. It prints.
The lesson. Edit lesson has six steps: Lesson (title, goal, homework), Steps (with minutes against the school's lesson length), Materials (a file, the class's book with pages, or a link, each marked Teacher only or A copy per student), Slides (with your note, never on the board), Quiz (one of yours, run live) and Check. In the room, the register's lesson screen opens the lesson in four steps — Attendance, Teach, Homework, Sign — with the plan's steps to tick and the slides on the board.
Materials and homework. Hand out in the app shares a material with the lesson's pupils: they and their families find it under From the lessons in This week and get one notification. A teacher-only material is never handed out; the server refuses it. In the Homework step the plan's homework is already in the card; the due day is picked from the class's next lessons, and the school's homework rule refuses a test day or a full day and asks you to confirm when the class's minutes go over the limit.
Cover. When an absence is recorded, work can be left for each lesson. The colleague covering opens the lesson as usual — Attendance, The work, Homework, Sign — and sees the work left first, then The group's plan for today: title, goal, curriculum lines, the steps with their minutes and the materials, which open and print. Homework in a cover lesson stays with the group's own teacher.
Who sees what. A teacher plans their own groups; a class teacher reads the plans of their class; a subject head reads every year plan of their subjects; school management reads every group's year and plans none. Sharing lets colleagues start their own year from yours. Pupils and families never see the plan or the lesson's topic: they see homework, announced tests, what came back and the materials handed out.
The curriculum. Bildena carries published curricula for many school types — the German Länder, England's national curriculum, France's programmes and others. Management or a subject's head can keep a school curriculum for a subject: a copy of the official one with lines added, changed or removed and each line given to the years it is taught in. The plans of that subject then count their coverage against it, line by line: begun, planned or a gap. Where Bildena has no curriculum for a subject and year, units name their points in your own words.
What Bildena does not do
- It does not read trips or exam weeks from the calendar: you tick them, and the plan moves. Only lessons the cover desk cancels drop out by themselves.
- It does not import a scheme of work from Word or Excel; units are entered in the wizard or copied from a plan in Bildena.
- It needs a timetable published in Bildena: without one, a plan has no dates.
- It does not show families the lesson's content, only homework, tests and materials handed out.
- A cover teacher reads the day's plan but does not set homework for the group.
Bildena is new and has no reference schools to point to yet, which is one more reason to try it with your own timetable before deciding.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a scheme of work and a lesson plan?
A scheme of work orders the units of a subject for one class across a term or year, with the lessons each takes and the curriculum points it covers. A lesson plan describes one of those lessons: its goal, steps, materials and homework.
How many lessons should a scheme of work plan for?
Count the lessons the class will really have, by date, after known losses, and fill about four in five with units. Keep the rest as spare lessons after the longest units.
What is a curriculum map?
The department's view across years: which units each year group meets and which curriculum points each covers, so gaps and repetitions show. In Bildena each group's Curriculum tab shows every line as begun, planned or a gap.
Can a cover teacher see my lesson plan in Bildena?
Yes, for the lesson they cover: the register's lesson screen shows the work you left and the group's plan for that day, with its steps and materials.
In Bildena School, year and lesson plans sit in Learning, next to the timetable, the register and cover. In the free month you try every module with a sample school, then with your own data. No card needed.
