Switching Planning Tools Without Starting From Scratch

The hardest part of changing planning tools is the work already inside the old one. Whole-school curricular plans that took staff meetings to agree. Long-term plans every teacher built for their class. The thought of re-typing all of that is what keeps schools on a tool that stopped suiting them years ago, and it is a fair objection: your planning is years of professional judgement, and no school should have to abandon it to change software.

So we do the moving. Send us the documents and we set your school up with them.

What comes across

Two kinds of document make up a school’s planning, and we move both:

• Whole-school curricular plans. The agreed plan for each subject, usually a PDF or Word document on the school server or website. These come into Pleanáil as structured, editable plans: the policy sections, the class-by-class content grids, the agreed methodologies and programmes.
• Teachers’ long-term plans. Each teacher’s year plan for each subject, exported from your current planning tool or kept in Word. These come in as full long-term plans with their month-by-month structure, matched to the curriculum objectives for the class.

Because both layers land in one system, they connect: the whole-school plan flows into each teacher’s long-term plan, the long-term plan feeds the fortnightly plan, and the Cúntas Míosúil generates from what was taught. The principal’s guide to curriculum enactment covers why that connection is the point.

Word for word

A school has to stand over its plan exactly as it was written and agreed. So imported text is reproduced word for word from your documents: your phrasing, your programmes, your agreed sequences. We do the import, we check every plan against the original document, and you review everything before any teacher sees it. Nothing goes live to staff until you say so.

Your original documents stay attached in your account too, as downloads, so the paper trail from the old plan to the new one is always there.

How the move works

1. Send us the documents. PDF or Word for the whole-school plans, and each teacher’s year-plan export from your current tool. A staff list with class levels does the rest.
2. We build your school. Accounts for every teacher, the right curriculum version for each subject, the whole-school plans in place and each teacher’s long-term plans matched to the curriculum for their class.
3. You review, then release. You check the plans against your originals. When you are happy, teachers log in and this year’s planning is already in place.

For a full school this is days, done for you, as part of coming on board. One school we moved recently had all of its whole-school curricular plans and a year plan for every class teacher in Pleanáil before staff logged in for the first time.

Why mid-year is a fine time to move

Most schools assume a planning tool change has to wait for September. Moving the plans in for you removes the reason to wait: teachers pick up in Pleanáil exactly where their year plan already is, and the next fortnightly plan and the next Cúntas Míosúil come from the new system. The 2026/27 year, with subjects straddling the 1999 and redeveloped curriculums, is exactly the year a connected system earns its keep.

Frequently asked questions

What formats can you work with? PDF and Word cover nearly everything we have seen, including exports from the planning tools schools commonly use. Send us a sample document and we will tell you quickly whether it will come across cleanly.

Our plans are written against the 1999 curriculum. Is that a problem? No. Pleanáil carries the complete 1999 curriculum and the redeveloped specifications side by side, per subject. Your plans land against the versions your school actually uses, and you switch an area when your school does.

Does the import cost extra? No. It is part of how we bring a whole school on board. Talk to us about your school and we will walk you through it.

I plan solo. Can I bring my own plans in? Yes. The same offer stands for a solo teacher’s year plans: get in touch and send us what you have.

Will teachers see half-finished imports? No. Imported plans stay hidden until you have reviewed and released them.

Where Pleanáil fits

Pleanáil is the planning platform built for the 2026 transition: fortnightly, weekly and monthly plans, long-term plans, the Cúntas Míosúil generated from your plans, and a whole-school layer with a principal dashboard. The whole-school page has pricing and how onboarding works, and the import means your school arrives with its planning intact.

Have plans you would want to bring with you? Tell us about your school and we will take it from there.