Inside CGA's 2027 Timetable: How We Build a School Week That Works Across Time Zones

Every year, our timetable tells you something about how we think school should work. The 2027 timetable is no exception — and this year it comes with some genuine firsts: Year 6 group classes for the first time, new electives across Years 8 and 9, and a clearer academic pathway through to the A Levels or US Diploma in the senior years.

Before we get into the year-by-year detail, it's worth answering the questions we get asked most often: how does an online school actually run a timetable when your students are logging in from Perth, Auckland, and everywhere in between?

How do you timetable a school across five time zones?

We don’t run one single timetable — we run multiple streams of the same class. A Year 9 English class might run at 5:45pm Sydney time, filled mostly with New Zealand students starting their evening a little later, while another stream of the same class runs at 5pm New Zealand time for a mostly Australian cohort. It means a student in Perth and a student in Auckland can both be in “Year 9 English” without either of them logging on at an awkward hour.

Every class is capped at 15 students and every class is recorded, so if a stream’s timing doesn’t quite work on a given day, nothing is lost.

Why does CGA run a four-day academic week?

This is probably the question we get asked most. The short version: we don’t have a standard recess or lunch break built into the week, because scheduling a break across five time zones creates more problems than it solves. Instead, we’ve taken all of that time back and given students Fridays free of timetabled classes.

Fridays aren’t a day off — they’re where our extracurricular clubs, homework support sessions, and independent project time happen. Some students use Fridays to catch up, some use them to go deeper into something they love, and some genuinely just get their weekend started a little early. Read more here.

Do all students follow the same timetable?

Not necessarily. The timetable examples below show our group class structure, but it isn’t a one-size-fits-all requirement. Students can also access one-to-one teaching through our in-house DaVinci teachers, and many students learn through a mix of both — group classes for the collaborative, social side of learning, and DaVinci sessions for subjects or times where a more tailored approach works better.

This matters most for students who need real flexibility in when they study — athletes training around competition schedules, students who focus best at unconventional hours, or anyone who needs a lighter group-class load for a period. For these students, we can replace some or all of a subject’s group classes with one-to-one DaVinci sessions scheduled at times that suit them, effectively building a bespoke version of the timetable around their life.

What a week actually looks like, year by year

The exact shape of a student’s week changes a lot depending on their year level, their subjects, and where in the world they’re logging in from. Here’s four real examples.

Year 6, Brisbane

2027 marks the first year we're teaching Year 6 students in group classes, and the timetable reflects that shift deliberately. Classes run for 45 minutes rather than the standard hour — long enough to properly engage with a topic, short enough that attention and stamina hold up across a full school day. This student's week covers Social Science, English, Mathematics, Science, Art, Information Technology, and a weekly Learning for Life session, alongside form time and the whole-school assembly.

Year 9, Sydney — Pre-IG

This is where the new elective choices come through clearly. Alongside core subjects like English, Science, and Mathematics, this student's week includes Financial Literacy and Computer Science — two of the new Year 8/9 electives for 2027 — plus Social Science and a Learning for Life session. Electives run on a semester-by-semester basis, so a student's mix of subjects can look quite different from one semester to the next as their interests develop.

Year 10, Perth — IGCSE

This student's week shows the core IGCSE subjects — English Literature, Biology, Mathematics, Art Photography — running across the standard timetable, with Chemistry sitting slightly apart, run as a part-time class to work around the time difference between Perth and the rest of the country. It's a good example of the kind of small adjustment we make so a subject stays accessible even from the trickiest time zone.

Year 11, Auckland — AS Levels

By Year 11, the timetable reflects a student's chosen A Level subjects — in this case History, Mathematics, English Language, and Chemistry — building toward the assessment structure of the AS Levels. This is also where the senior pathway set up in Year 10 (with the Science Double Award) starts to pay off, as students move into subject-specific, exam-focused study.

Not ready for full-time? Try us part-time

CGA classes aren't only for full-time students. We also run part-time group classes designed to sit alongside a traditional school day — a fast-paced, focused top-up in a subject a student wants to go further in, without changing where they go to school.

For a lot of families, this is how their CGA journey starts. Joining a part-time class is a low-commitment way to experience how CGA actually works — the pace, the teaching style, the format of online group learning — before deciding full-time enrolment

Where does CGA sit with registration and compliance?

For full-time students in New Zealand, CGA is a registered school and fully approved by the Ministry of Education — full-time enrolment with us meets New Zealand's schooling requirements in full.

In Australia, families can use full-time enrolment with CGA to meet home education registration requirements in their state. We provide a template based on each student's enrolled subjects, which families can use as part of their registration or renewal process.

The bigger picture

A timetable is a small, practical document, but it says a lot about what a school actually believes. Shorter classes for younger students, more elective choice as students get older, a clear pathway into senior study, and a week structured around time zones rather than tradition — none of that happens by accident. It's what a school built for the online world looks like, rather than a traditional school simply moved onto a screen.