Schemes of Work on the Standards Site
What are Schemes of Work?
The Schemes of Work, as presented on the Standards Site, are available to help teachers in their planning and teaching. The Schemes are guidelines to support medium and long-term planning. They are not compulsory; however, they can be used to help teachers deliver Programmes of Study and useful in adapting current schemes that teachers use. The Schemes of Work are made up of units that together cover the Programmes of Study and non-statutory guidelines for Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 in all subjects except English and mathematics. The PE and citizenship Schemes also cover the Key Stage 4 Programmes of Study.
Finding the correct Scheme of Work
It is possible to download all the Schemes from the website and they can be searched for by subject and Key Stage as well as by subject word. They are also all listed in one place. Each Scheme contains a number of units as well as supporting information on planning and teaching the subject. There are ideas for putting units together, files to download and edit and references to useful websites and organisations.
More importantly, there is concise information on how to use the Schemes, as part of planning, in order to adapt them to suit the needs of pupils and in order to combine them by identifying links between subjects. Within each Scheme itself, there is a section called 'Using this Scheme'. This provides information on a range of issues including progression, inclusion and links with other subjects and aspects of the curriculum. There are suggestions for adapting Schemes to a school's own needs, assessing progress and ideas for homework. There is also advice on organising a subject Scheme across a year and key stage.
Other features of the website
The website has a useful planning section which gives short, medium and long-term planning examples from schools. The section on adapting units gives useful examples on how teachers have adapted the Schemes to fit with their own class needs. It is also possible to view pupils' work and teachers' thoughts on how well the unit worked. Finally, there is similar information available on linking units between subjects and the facility to send personal examples in to the site.
Guidance for teaching literacy and numeracy is provided in the form of national frameworks produced by DCSF elsewhere on the Standards site. These contain teaching objectives from Reception to Year 9.
Advice about Schemes of Work for headteachers is available on TeacherNet as well as examples of how they are used in the case studies section.
Last updated: 15 July 2007
