Last reviewed: 26 October 2026
The timetable is the engine of a school. When it works, teachers know where to be, practical rooms are shared fairly and every learning area gets its full share of lessons. When it doesn’t, you get clashes on Monday morning, a science teacher booked in two labs at once and a learning area that quietly loses a lesson a week all term. Under CBC the job is harder than it was under 8-4-4, because junior school has many learning areas, shared subject teachers and practical work that needs specific rooms. This guide is for deputy head teachers, directors of studies and school owners who build or approve the timetable.
On this page
Step 1: Get the Lesson Allocations Right
Start from the official numbers, not last year’s timetable. Each KICD curriculum design states how many lessons a week its learning area should get, and the designs are published on the KICD curriculum designs page. Under the Ministry of Education’s 2024 rationalisation of learning areas, the weekly load fell to 31 lessons in lower primary, 35 in upper primary and 40 in junior school, with junior school reduced to nine compulsory learning areas. Those totals include the weekly Pastoral Programme of Instruction (PPI) lesson.
Make a simple table for each grade: learning area, lessons per week, and whether any lessons must be double periods for practicals. Add the column up. If your total does not match the official weekly load, find the error before you go further.
For senior school, use the KICD Grade 10 curriculum designs and the subject combinations your school actually offers. Our subject combinations explorer shows how core subjects and pathway electives fit together.
Step 2: List Your Constraints
A timetable is a puzzle with fixed pieces. Write the constraints down before you place a single lesson:
- Teachers: who teaches what, in which grades, and any part-time teachers’ available days.
- Rooms: the science lab, computer room, home science room, workshop and field. A single lab shared by Grades 7 to 9 is usually the hardest constraint in a junior school.
- Fixed events: assembly, PPI, games afternoons, clubs, chapel or madrasa time, and the lunch break.
- Teacher load: set a fair maximum number of lessons a week per teacher and spread free periods across the week so nobody teaches six in a row.
Step 3: Place the Hardest Lessons First
Experienced timetablers work from the most constrained lessons to the least:
- Double periods that need a specific room, such as Integrated Science practicals and Pre-Technical Studies projects.
- Lessons taught by part-time or shared teachers.
- Learning areas where one teacher covers several streams.
- Core lessons such as Mathematics and English, ideally in the morning when learners are freshest.
- Everything else.
Spread each learning area across the week. Five Mathematics lessons on five different days are far better than two doubles and a single.
Step 4: Check for Clashes and Fairness
Before you print, check three views of the timetable: each class, each teacher and each room. A clash shows up on the teacher and room views even when the class view looks fine. Then ask:
- Does any learning area always fall in the last period of the day?
- Does any teacher have all their free periods on one day?
- Is the lab booked for more lessons than it has periods?
- Is there cover built in for exams and school-based assessment weeks?
Step 5: Publish, Then Review After Two Weeks
Share class timetables with learners and parents, teacher timetables with staff, and a master copy in the staffroom. After two weeks, ask heads of department what is not working and adjust once, rather than making small changes every few days. Record lessons lost to events so you can schedule make-up time.
Manual, Spreadsheet or Software?
A one-stream primary school can manage with a careful spreadsheet. Our page of school Excel templates is a good starting point. Once you have several streams, a junior school and shared practical rooms, the number of combinations grows quickly and every staff change means redoing the puzzle by hand.
That is where timetable software earns its cost. For small and mid-size private CBC schools, our pick is Anademy Timetable from Ananke Digital. The name Anademy blends Ananke and Academy. It works from your own lesson counts, teacher-subject pairs, part-time availability and room constraints, generates a clash-free timetable you can adjust by dragging, and prints class, teacher and room versions plus an exam invigilation roster. Each set-up is built for the individual school. See how it compares with other options in our guide to the best school timetable software in Kenya, where you can also book a demo.
Related Guides for School Leaders
Once the timetable is set, the next big jobs are assessment and reporting. See CBC report cards and SBA for schools and writing CBC lesson plans and schemes of work, or browse the school owners hub.