Learning Plans - Editing a Word template

If basic changes to the Learning Plan template can't meet your needs, you can use a Word template to completely customise your learning plans.

This guide details how you can use the default learning plan as a start point, or begin with your own pre-existing template in Word.

If you want to use your own Word document, skip to Editing the template in Word.

We'll begin by downloading the built-in learning plan template.

Downloading the template

Click your account menu, in the top right, and choose Admin followed by Learning plan templates and settings.

Select the template you want to edit.

This takes you to the learning plan template admin area. As we want to make our changes directly in Word we can scroll to the Word Document Template section and click Download Word Template.

Once downloaded, open the file in Word.

Editing the template in Word

Note that the template contains a mix of plain text and text in curly brackets. Any text that is not contained in curly brackets will appear unaltered on the final learning plan.

Text you want to remain unaltered could be the school name, a section heading, or sentence of explanatory text that you need to appear on every pupil's plan.

Any text that is contained in curly brackets is a Placeholder.

A Placeholder represents an instruction to Insight to insert information at specified locations on the plan. In the above example, placeholders include the pupil's name, creation and review dates, comment boxes, assessments, and targets.

If you're beginning with your own Word document there will, of course, be no Placeholders to begin with.

The Placeholders for assessments and targets both tell Insight to insert these as a table automatically.

Inserting additional Placeholders

The document can be formatted in any way you wish.

For example, in the template in Word, let's insert a 4x3 table. To do this, click the Insert option on the menu ribbon, click Table, and select the array of cells required.

Now return to the learning plan admin area in Insight (from where you downloaded the template). Scroll down to view the list of placeholders and copy one by clicking on the copy icon. First, let's copy the placeholder for Date of Birth.

Then return to your Word template and paste the placeholder in cell number 2 of the table. This will ensure the pupil's date of birth is inserted in the plan in that location.

Now do the same for pupil age, year group, class, attendance, and UPN. Add a heading above the table. And finally, add explanatory headings in the blank cells of the table next to each of the placeholders.

Continue to make any other changes you require. These might include adding the school logo for example. Save your completed template ready to upload it.

Uploading the new template into Insight

Return to the learning plan admin area. Click on the Upload Word Template button to upload the new, edited template into Insight. You should see a green tick to confirm it has been uploaded.

Viewing the new template in Insight

Return to the Pupils area of Insight, choose the Learning Plan tab, and either select a pupil with a current plan based on the template you are working on, or set up a new one and enter some information.

Now click the download button to view the changes made to the template.

The downloaded plan now contains any changes made in the template.

Using a template from another school

Occasionally, it may be useful to import a template provided by another school. For example, a template defined by your Trust or even a plan shared by another school that you want to implement.

As the templates are just Word files, this is fine to do but requires a small amount of additional work.

Create a New Template then make changes to the Target Table Columns and Comment Boxes to match those used in the template you're importing. See the basic template changes guide for how to do this.

Then click Upload Word Template, choose the template file you're importing and upload it.

The new template is now ready to use.