How to write a scheme of work

Most of the work in a scheme of work happens before you fill in a single row. It is arithmetic: how many weeks you actually have, and how much curriculum has to fit inside them. Get that part right and the table fills itself. Get it wrong and you are three weeks behind by half term, which is how most schemes fail.

This is the procedure. If what you need is the shape of the document instead, the columns and what goes in each one are set out in the GES scheme of work format.

1. Count the weeks you really have

Start from the published calendar, not from memory. The GES academic calendar for basic schools for 2026/2027, released on 6 May 2026, sets the three terms like this:

• First term, 8 September to 17 December 2026, 15 weeks
• Second term, 5 January to 25 March 2027, 12 weeks
• Third term, 20 April to 22 July 2027, 14 weeks

The terms are unequal, and that is the single most common thing a downloaded scheme gets wrong. Templates circulating online are usually paced to a flat twelve or fourteen weeks every term. Paced that way, a first-term scheme runs out of content three weeks before the term ends, and a second-term scheme carries three weeks of content past the point the class stops.

One more thing about weeks. The Week column restarts at 1 in every term. Second term week one is Week 1, not Week 16.

2. Take out revision and examination

The last week of each term is examinations and the week before it is revision. Those two weeks are in the scheme, and they carry no new indicators. Subtract them and the real teaching weeks are:

• First term: 13 teaching weeks
• Second term: 10 teaching weeks
• Third term: 12 teaching weeks

That is 35 teaching weeks in the year, out of 41 weeks in school. Six of them are not teaching weeks. Every pacing decision below divides by 35, not 41.

Then there is the first week. Plenty of teachers do not start new content in week one at all. The class is still settling, the register is still moving, and the week goes on going over last term's examination questions and revising what came before.

That is normal practice rather than a rule. If it is how you teach, put it in the scheme as a revision week and plan around 34 teaching weeks, or 33 if you do it every term. A scheme that quietly assumes new content from day one is one you start falling behind in immediately.

3. Count the indicators in your subject

Open the curriculum for your subject and class and count the indicators for the year. This number varies far more between subjects than most teachers expect, and it is the reason no general rule about pacing survives contact with an actual subject.

Basic 4 English carries 131 indicators for the year. Basic 4 History carries 11. The same teacher, planning both, is writing two documents with almost nothing in common: one moves four indicators a week, the other lets a single indicator run for three weeks. A scheme that gives both subjects one indicator per row is wrong in both directions.

4. Divide, then adjust

Indicators divided by 35 gives you a starting pace, and a starting pace is all it gives you. Indicators are not the same size. Some are a single lesson and some carry six or seven exemplars that will take a fortnight to work through properly. So do the division first, then walk the list and move the heavy ones out to two weeks, taking the time back from indicators that will land in one.

The check at the end is simple. Every indicator in the curriculum appears somewhere in the year, exactly once, and the last one lands before the third-term revision week.

5. Keep the curriculum's own order

Work through the strands and sub-strands in the order the curriculum prints them, and copy the names and codes exactly as written. Pace them so the term covers the strands in a balanced way rather than spending eight weeks in strand one and rushing the rest.

Codes matter more here than anywhere else in the document, because the scheme is what your weekly lesson notes are checked against. A code that does not resolve, or one copied from an older syllabus, is the first thing a headteacher flags. That is true of the note and it is true of the scheme it came from, so it is worth getting right once, at the top. See how an indicator code is built if the numbering is still unfamiliar.

6. Date every week

The Week Ending column holds the Friday of each week, written as dd/mm/yyyy, counted from the day the term reopens. For 2026/2027 the first row of each term ends:

• First term, week 1: 11/09/2026
• Second term, week 1: 08/01/2027
• Third term, week 1: 23/04/2027

Then add seven days a row. Dating the weeks is what turns the scheme from a list into a plan, and it is what lets anyone reading it tell at a glance whether the class is on schedule.

7. Name the resources you will actually need

The Resources column exists so that materials get prepared before the week they are needed, not on the morning. Most downloaded schemes fill it with the same three words on every row, usually pictures, charts and video clips, which tells you nothing in week 9 when you needed a place-value chart made. Write what the week actually needs.

Which curriculum to plan from right now

Worth knowing before you start, because it has been in the news. NaCCA completed a review of the kindergarten to Primary 6 curriculum between March and July 2026, and presented it to the Minister for Education in late July. As of the middle of August 2026 it had not been adopted. It is still with the Ghana Education Service for review, after which it goes to Cabinet.

Until that happens, the standards-based curriculum already in force is the one to plan from, and a scheme built on it is the correct document to submit. We will update this post when the position changes.

If the term has already started

A scheme is not all or nothing. If it is week 5, you draw the scheme from week 5 forward and pace the remaining indicators across the weeks that are left, rather than reconstructing four weeks you have already taught. What a headteacher needs from you is a workable map of what happens next.

None of this is difficult. It is an afternoon of counting, and it is the same counting again for every subject you teach. teache generates a full-year scheme from the curriculum for your class, paced across the real term lengths with every week dated, and you edit it from there. See how it works or download a blank template and do it by hand.