Frequently Asked Questions

Hopefully you'll find the answer to you question here. If not, use the contact us link at the bottom of the page and we'll try to get back to you ASAP.

If you need some help to get started here are a couple of guides to help you out...

Getting Started - a guide to setting up a new account.
Joining Your School - if your school already has an account this is the guide to join it.
Users Guide - a guide using the teachers planner and what features to look out for.

The guides are all PDF files. You will need a PDF viewer such as or .



The site's in Beta. What is that?

This is new. It's been extensively Alpha tested by quite a large number of teachers. However, not all the features are fully working yet (the basic planner works just fine and you can feel confident in using it!) and we're looking for ways to add new features. The Beta programme allows people to use the system but with the understanding that things might not always work exactly as you'd expect and that things might change from time to time. As a user on the Beta programme we'll give you a discount on the paid accounts (up to 50% off the normal price and free years too!). During the Beta programme we'd love it if you would use the Contact Us page to tell us about any problems you have and to suggest new features.

How does it work?

The teachers planner needs a few bits of information to work properly. In order to enable you to skip backwards and forwards between lessons we need to know something about the way your school works. The three things we need to know are:

  • How your years work: what days the school is open, how many lessons (you might want to include registrations times, lunches and other times too) there are, and what sort of timetable you run (1 week, 2 weeks etc...).
  • When terms start and end and which week is a week 1 and which is a week 2 (if you have multiple week timetables!).
  • Your timetable. When you tell us when each of your lessons are it means we can find the next and previous time you teach a class. It also means the suggestions can be made for when homework should be handed in.

Once we have this information you'll be ready to start using the planner. If you've already signed up for an account and things aren't working then you should go to the setup pages to make sure you've provided all the information we need to make things work for you.

How secure is this site?

VERY! We use top notch SSL encryption between your browser and our server (check for the padlock icon) and all your personal details are encrypted on our servers. Even if someone hacks our database, the information they lift from it will be useless to them! We don't store much information about you anyway. We also don't use cookies so there's no information stored on your device. Our servers are in the UK and are backed up every day to ensure that your data is safe in the event of a problem.

How much is it?

There are free accounts! You don't need to pay a thing to use the basic planner and for many people this will be plenty. However, the more advanced features require a paid account and these come in various flavours.

  • A personal account will only cost you £6 a year (50p a month!). This will give you access to things like seeing a class view where you can see past and future lessons for a single class in one view. You'll also be able to set up schemes of work so that you can just pick the lesson from the scheme rather than having to write it out afresh for each class you'll teach it to.
  • If you get a school account (from as little as £30 a year) you'll also get the ability to share the configuration between all your teachers (a time saver!), enter your school calendar for all staff to see and to be able to share schemes with other members of staff (so your department or year group can work collaboratively to produce schemes for everyone to use). If you have classes you share with other teachers you'll be able to see what the other teacher(s) did with the class and that'll ease the burden of having to track each other down to check 'what did you do with them last time?'.

I haven't received my confirmation email. What should I do?

There are a couple of reasons why you may not have received the confirmation email.

  • First of all, you may have an over zealous spam filter. Check your spam folder to see if the confirmation has arrived there.
  • Maybe you entered the wrong email when you entered it. Go to the setup link in the navbar and check in the name and contact section to see if your address is correct.

If the address is correct, you can request another confirmation email from the name and contact section of setup which will hopefully get through this time. Failing that, contact us using the contact link at the bottom of the page and we'll see if we can work it out for you.

I've forgotten my password.

Go back to the home page and click on the login link at the top. At the login page you'll notice a link under the password that says 'Forgotten your password?'. Click on it. On the new page supply the email address you used to register with teachersplanner.org and click the submit button. You'll get an email with your password reminder. If that still doesn't help, the email will also have a link to a password reset page. You can only get the link emailed to you from the 'Forgotten your password?' page and it will only work once.

Be prepared to check your spam folder for the email!

The next/previous lesson/day button is not there.

The planner will only go to the next day or next lesson (or the previous ones!) if it can find them. The most common cause of the buttons not appearing are because you're at the start or end of a school year or your timetable has changed and it's a new class. If your sure neither of these is the case then you need to check the setup of the terms in the setup pages and make sure they're correct. If you get no joy contact us and explain the problem. We'll do what we can to help you out.

When I try to go to the next lesson one of my classes is skipped. Why?

The planner assumes that the the same class will have the same class code AND the same description. For example 9O Geography. If you accidentally mistype one of these items in your timetable the planner will not realise they are the same class. For example 11F science is not the same as 11F Science. (Notice the spelling of science.) The solution is to check your timetable carefully for any discrepancies. If the school year has already started you'll have to make a copy of the current timetable to start 'today' and then fix the problem in the new version of your timetable.

My timetable has changed!

No problem! The planner can cope with you having mutiple timetables - you could even have a different one on every day of the school year! Go to the setup pages and look for the timetable links near the bottom of the page. Once you're looking at your timetable you can choose a date for the new timetable to start and enter it. If two timetables are in the same school year the planner will still allow you to skip forwards or backwards to classes on the different timetables as long as you use the same class code and description for them.