PlanBee is made up of a small team of experienced educators who have made it their mission to ensure that teachers are able to deliver relevant, engaging and creative learning experiences to their class, whilst retaining a healthy work-life balance for themselves.
About Us
PlanBee was born in 2009 and has since helped more than 200,000 teachers, tutors and home educators by providing enjoyable, flexible and creative schemes of work that are completely ready to teach and aligned meticulously to National Curriculum objectives.
What started as a one-woman mission to reduce teacher workload has grown and evolved over the years to become a leading curriculum provider. We now offer comprehensive curriculum solutions to schools, as well as a vast library of resources to support individual teachers.
Our Vision and Principles
Our vision:
- For children, our goal is to create relevant and engaging learning experiences that cultivate children's curiosity and build their confidence.
- For teachers, we aim to provide well-researched, carefully prepared schemes of work that energise educators and are enjoyable to teach.
- For schools, we hope to spark genuine enthusiasm among staff and children, contributing to a positive learning environment which promotes excellent progress and achievement.
Our principles:
Six core principles underpin our work. We believe the curricula and resources we offer should be: enjoyable, equitable, coherent, cohort-relevant, creative and flexible. This means we are already delivering resources that meet the aims of the ongoing Curriculum review, which is seeking to create a broader, richer curriculum that fosters creativity, digital skills, and oracy – skills employers particularly prize in today’s fast-changing world.
Enjoyable
Enjoyable learning experiences are at the heart of what we do. Through enjoyment, we seek to motivate and engage children so they become confident and curious learners.
Equitable
Every child has a right to an ambitious, inclusive education whatever their background or needs.
We support equitable provision which represents all learners and works to narrow the attainment gap.
Coherent
A coherent curriculum, which builds on prior learning, is essential for children to acquire and retain increasingly complex knowledge and skills.
Cohort-Relevant
We explore relevant themes like social justice and climate change to prepare children for their future. Our resources also support children to secure social and emotional tools alongside subject specific skills.
Creative
We believe that creative and exploratory experiences, which encourage self-expression, creative thinking and innovation, are critical for unlocking children's full potential.
Flexible
We recognise that each school is unique. So, it's important that schools and teachers have the flexibility to create curricula which work for them.
Meet the Team
Becky Cranham
I set up PlanBee in 2009 after five years in the classroom. Despite loving teaching, I found the workload unsustainable and began to look for other ways to make a living. That was when the idea for PlanBee was born: what if I could help ease the planning burden by creating ready-to-teach schemes of work that wouldn't require teachers to spend much of their own time lesson prepping? We were all teaching to the same National Curriculum objectives so it made no sense to me that we all had to spend so much of our evenings and weekends planning the same things. Why not create lessons that all teachers could use, saving them invaluable time? Maybe, just maybe, that would help good teachers stay in the profession.
So, I left the classroom and spent 9 months creating schemes of work whilst supply teaching to keep afloat. PlanBee finally launched in September 2009 and from then on has gone from strength to strength. I'm incredibly proud of the business our team of bees has created and can't wait to see what the future holds for us.
Abby Milnes
I joined PlanBee back in 2017 after having used PlanBee's resources a lot in my own classroom. I love spending time researching lots of different topics and finding out about so many different things for the lessons I create. When you're teaching, you don't have the time to get stuck into the planning as much I can now, and I really enjoy that aspect of my job.
Now, as senior manager, the majority of my job is helping the business run smoothly, but I still get to create and plan lessons to be used by all of you!
Laura Steele
My teaching colleagues used to joke that a job at PlanBee would be perfect for me because I've always loved the planning side of teaching, and then in 2016 it became a reality! I taught in KS2 for 11 years before joining the bees and, although I loved teaching, I felt ready for a change of pace. I now really enjoy creating schemes of work from scratch and being able to take my time ensuring that the lessons are all of a really high quality. It's so rewarding when you receive feedback that the lessons are being appreciated by busy teachers.
Ben Dare
My job within PlanBee is to help the team keep up to date with payments and invoices. If you have a problem with a payment, or you need to settle your account, it's me you'll speak to! I'm the only one of the team not to have a background in primary education.
