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Registering an ECT who has been registered before and collecting their programme choices

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Why we’re doing this

We’ve designed a user journey which allows for schools to register ECTs at their school that have previously been registered at another school.

We’ve tried to keep the journey as similar as possible to registering an ECT who hasn’t been registered before, and we’ve not designed a separate call to action to register an ECT who is transferring schools. This is because we wanted to not expect schools to have to understand if an ECT had been registered at a previous school, as this could be confusing and lead to schools making mistakes.

What we tested

We created and tested a journey which collected information about the ECT such as:

  • name
  • TRN
  • start date
  • working pattern

We also designed and tested playing back some information we’d already captured from the previous school, such as the lead provider and delivery partner, and asking the new school if this information would remain the same going forward.

A screenshot of the initial design we tested to ask users if the programme choices would remain the same for the transferred ECT.

However, after designing and testing this iteration, data analysis of the existing service found that transferred ECTs tend to take on the lead provider and delivery partner of the new school in the vast majority of cases.

The analysis found that in transfers of ECTs between schools in 2023:

  • 97% of ECTs were registered with the same lead provider as their new school’s programme choices
  • 96% of ECTs were registered with the same delivery partner as their new school’s programme choice

We then iterated our design to default to offering to register the ECT with the lead provider and delivery partner for the new school, rather than asking if they wish to retain the previous choices. We chose to still highlight that the ECT had been registered before, as we know that schools are reassured by us highlighting that we’re aware of that. It confirms that the ECT has undergone training and induction before and that they can pick up where they left off.

A screenshot of the design where we highlight the ECT has been registered previously.
A screenshot of the design where we ask the user if they would like to use the schools programme choices for the ECT being transferred in.

This has tested well with users in research, and we’ve been reassured by them telling us that they would continue with the programme choices we play back for the school.

Next steps

We’ll be building this journey for transferring in ECTs, as well as looking to build a similar journey for transferring in mentors who are part way through mentor training.