The September planning checklist for Irish primary teachers

Every August the same question surfaces in staffrooms, group chats and search bars: what actually needs to be ready for September? Here is that list, in order of when it matters. It is shorter than the version in your head.

Before the first day

• Know which curriculum each subject is on this year. English and Gaeilge on the Primary Language Curriculum, Maths on the 2023 curriculum, your school’s enactment area on its new 2025 specification, the rest on 1999. Full subject-by-subject guide here.
• Find out your school’s enactment area for 2026/27 if you do not already know it, and skim the relevant specification. You do not need to master it in August; you need to know which document your planning references.
• Draft your long-term plans. Month-by-month maps of what lands when, per subject, reflecting the whole-school plan. Two focused sessions is enough with the right method: a working method here. Many schools ask for LTPs within the first weeks of term, so drafted-not-perfect is the August target.
• Rough out your timetable against the subject time allocations, and plan your classroom routines deliberately: entry, transitions, materials, home time. In week one, routines are the curriculum.
• If you share your class with a multigrade room, structure the plans by room, not by level. One plan, not four.
• If this is your first class, the list is slightly different, and shorter than you fear: the NQT guide is here.

The first week

• Teach and rehearse the routines you planned. Every minute spent here in week one comes back tenfold by October.
• Write your first short-term plan lightly. Week one never goes to plan and should not be over-planned. Objectives for the core subjects, get-to-know and diagnostic activities elsewhere.
• Start your baselines. Informal assessment in the first fortnight (reading, number, writing samples) gives your October planning something real to stand on, and gives the SET team what they need for support planning.

By the end of September

• Long-term plans finished and submitted, whatever your school’s arrangement is.
• Short-term planning rhythm established: weekly, fortnightly or monthly, written in one sitting at a consistent time. If a fortnightly plan is taking you more than a half hour, the method needs changing, not the effort: fifteen minutes is realistic.
• Your first Cuntas Míosúil, written in the last week of the month while it is fresh. The twenty-minute routine is here.
• A folder that matches reality. By the 30th, plans, timetable and Cuntas should describe the classroom you are actually running. That is the entire standard.

What is deliberately not on this list

Laminated aspirational displays, twelve-page schemes nobody reads twice, and planning for the whole year in detail. The strongest September folder is the short, current one.

Pleanáil handles the mechanical layer of everything above: the right curriculum for every subject and level, long-term plans that flow into short-term plans, and a Cuntas Míosúil built from what you planned. Teachers who set up in August walk into September with the paperwork already moving. Start free.