Better programming for primary schools

Let’s be honest. Programming in primary schools can feel like wrestling an octopus. You’re teaching across every subject area, differentiating for a wide range of learners, managing behaviour, assessing, reporting and trying to squeeze in planning time between it all. No wonder programming sometimes ends up being a tick the box exercise.

It’s also very different to secondary schools. Instead of faculty teams, primary teachers usually plan collaboratively across stages or year levels. You might be huddled around OneNote, a shared drive or a big table covered in printouts. This kind of collaboration is powerful, but without a clear structure it can become messy, inconsistent and duplicated. Often no one is sure which version is current, and its a lot of work to drive improvements across the entire stage or year group.

Strong programming is more than compliance. Done well, it becomes a living roadmap for teaching and learning. Here are some practical ways to make programming in primary schools work for you and your team:

Start With the Big Picture
As a team, map your scope and sequence first. This keeps everyone focused on the same outcomes and helps you build natural integration across KLAs rather than piecemeal lessons.

Prioritise Key Knowledge and Skills
Highlight the essentials in each unit. Research from Dylan Wiliam and the OECD shows that concentrating on the big ideas and key skills produces stronger learning gains than trying to cover every dot point superficially.

Collaborate With a Consistent Structure
Use a common template for all your units. It makes life easier when you share programs or swap lessons between teachers. It also means new staff can step in and teach from the same playbook.

Plan Assessment Upfront
Think about how you will check understanding from day one. Low stakes assessments, quick checks and student work samples help you adapt your teaching before the summative task.

Leave Room to Breathe
Programming is a guide, not a script. Build in space to slow down, go deeper or pivot to student interests. Flexibility is essential in primary classrooms.

Review and Improve Together
At the end of each term, sit down as a team to evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Collect student data, teacher reflections and examples of work to make next term even stronger.

How Planuva Helps
Planuva makes this whole process easier. Instead of juggling multiple OneNote tabs or shared folders, Planuva puts your scope and sequence, units, assessments and success criteria all in one place. Your whole team can work live in the same program, update instantly and keep everything consistent across stages.

Better still, Planuva makes continuous improvement simple. Teachers can feed back improvements and updates directly into the master program so the whole stage benefits. No more out of date copies or lost great ideas. Your program evolves as your teaching does.

With Planuva, programming stops being a chore and starts becoming a tool you actually want to use.

If you want to help revolutionise primary school programming, join our movement at https://planuva.com