A scheme of study, also called a scheme of work, is a week by week plan of what a teacher will cover in a subject: which chapter, which topics, what activities and how learning will be checked. When it works, a principal can open it in any week and see whether a class is on track.
It usually fails for one reason. It is built from a template with equal weeks, and the real year has holidays, exams and chapters of very different lengths. Here is a method that avoids that.
Step 1: Count your real lessons
Start from the timetable. How many lessons of this subject does this class have each week? A subject with two lessons a week has very different pacing from one with six. Write the number down for each class and subject, because the same subject can differ by class.
Step 2: Remove holidays and exam weeks
Take the session dates and list every week. Mark the weeks that are lost or reduced: public holidays, Eid and summer breaks, school events, and exam weeks. A week with one holiday has fewer lessons. A week of exams has none. Do this before you place a single chapter.
Step 3: Count how many teaching weeks remain
Subtract the lost weeks from the total. This is your real teaching time. If a session has 36 weeks on paper, it is common to have far fewer in practice. The example is only an illustration. The point is to start from the calendar, not from the textbook.
Step 4: Spread chapters by length
Do not give every chapter the same time. Look at the textbook. A chapter with ten topics needs more lessons than one with three. Divide the available lessons in proportion to the size of each chapter, and keep a margin for slow weeks.
Step 5: Plan revision before each exam
Place a revision week just before each exam week, not after it. A plan that ends the last chapter the day before the paper has no room for revision or for a delayed week.
Step 6: Write the focus, activities and assessment for each week
For each teaching week write the chapter and topics, one or two activities, and how you will check learning. A five minute quiz or a short homework from the book exercise works well. This is the part teachers spend the most time on, so a draft to edit saves hours.
Step 7: Tick off what is taught and adjust
A plan is only useful if it moves with the year. Teachers should mark each week as taught. When a week is lost, push the remaining chapters later and see what no longer fits. A school that was closed for two weeks needs a visible plan change, not a quiet delay.
Doing this in Skoo
In the Syllabus menu you choose your board and the textbooks Skoo suggests for each class. Chapters and topics are added in one click, with printed page numbers. After the books, you decide for each subject if you want a Scheme of Study. Skoo does not make one without asking.
The plan is built from facts. Lessons per week come from the timetable, holidays come from the national and provincial calendar plus your own school calendar, exam weeks come from your school calendar, and longer chapters get more lessons. AI writes only the wording of each week's focus, activities and assessment, and teachers can edit it. You can change the session start date and the plan moves with it. You can push a chapter earlier or later, mark a week as holiday, revision or exam, rebuild or delete the plan, and print it.
Teachers see their own subjects, tick weeks as taught and plan the week. Only school managers change the plan itself. Skoo shows page references, key points and a short quote under each question, but not the full text of the textbook. Read more about the Scheme of Study in Skoo and what teachers get each week.