A school preparing to use an approved training provider (or the FIP)

Posted on 10 June 2021

How a school has who’s chosen to use a training provider, performs tasks such as signing up with a training provider and adding participants (ie. teachers and mentors).

User needs

As an induction tutor i need to
See my next steps so that i can prepare my cohort to start training

As an induction tutor i need to
view my programme choice and instructions on how i can change that programme if needed

As an induction tutor i need to
view instructions on how to sign up with a training provider and which providers i can contact

As an induction tutor i need to
see which training provider i am signed up with and report any incorrect sign ups that i receive

As an induction tutor i need to
know what information i need to collect from my participants, so i can prepare for onboarding them

Business goals

provide a route into support, for those schools who want to change their programme choice
provide schools with a way to report an incorrect sign up with a training provider

How it works

The journey works as follows;

On signing in, the user selects the cohort they want to manage
Assuming they have already chosen the programme they want to do for this cohort, they are presented with a list of tasks to perform
The first task of choose your induction programme is already marked as done. The user is presented with information on this page on the decision they made, and what their options are if they want to change that decision.
If second task of sign up with a training provider has the status of to do the following page gives instruction on how they can do this, along with advice on who they may need to talk to in their school network. If the task has the status of done the following page plays back who their training provider is and also a link to report if your school has been signed up incorrectly.
The third task of Add early career teachers and mentors currently just provides the user with details on what information they need to gather when this functionality is finally released (~ July 2021)

Prototype of journey

Journey start page (be sure to choose the appropriate settings first).

Username: ecf
Password: ecf

How a school’s programme choice changes

A logic diagram below illustrates how a programme choice changes when a school is recruited by a training provider, or when a school reports an incorrect sign up.

Much of the ALPHA phase looked at how might we help schools find a training provider. This included building and testing searchable directories of providers, and even processes where “proposals” could be sent to schools. However, research showed us that;

Much of the courtship between training providers and schools takes places offline and through existing channels and networks; silo’ing this into a digital platform would be more restrictive than beneficial
Training providers were reluctant to use this, as they were attached to their current methods which let them use their existing branding, processes and relationships

Aware that training providers were financially incentivised to recruit schools, a strategic decision was made not to focus effort on solving more pressing problems

Future considerations

Do schools need the option to change their induction programme? Currently changing induction programme is a task for DfE support. Even though we have put in place steps to make the right decision (ie. slow down the user and consider all of the options), we’ll need to monitor the frequency of these support requests.
How might we evolve or transition the task list once all tasks are “done”. The task list is a useful component to help users understand and complete the necessary steps to prepare their cohort. However, what happens when they’ve chosen their induction programme, been recruited by a provider and finished adding all of their participants? How does this page evolve to help the user manage this cohort over the next 2 years, when all tasks are complete?
How might we help isolated schools be recruited by training providers?. Currently much of the emphasis is placed on training providers recruiting a school, and not so much with schools finding the right training provider. Whilst this model works for schools who are part of a large network (networks are attractive for training providers to recruit - less effort, more sign ups), it may disadvantage more isolated schools. Work needs to be done into where the most motivation lies; in the school looking for a training provider (do they have the time and resources?) or the training provider (can we give them a list of schools not currently in a partnership).