With more schools expected to become academies, improving the conversion process is essential
The Department for Education (DfE) needed to replace long-standing legacy technology and improve the process for schools converting to academy status
We worked together with DfE staff and another agency in blended, multidisciplinary teams to research, design and deliver the services responsible for converting schools to academies and running them once they are established.
We started working with DfE in Spring 2022 with the overall goal of enabling the Department to respond to academy transfer and conversion applications more efficiently, and building their capacity to deal with future increases in demand.
This is a specialised service, with users being professionals within DfE and schools. The officers in charge of making sure the process runs smoothly were relying on outdated legacy systems. With more schools expected to become academies, it was essential to improve the conversion process.
Outcome
The new end-to-end service was made up of a series of applications. Working to DfE’s goal of a single, seamless academisation process for schools, we:
- built specialised applications delivering distinct stages of the service, decoupling them from each other to deliver quickly and effectively
- delivered a consistent user experience through re-use of design patterns and standards
- enforced technical standards across teams to ease iteration
“The main thing for me is how seamless the new system is… Also, just having a system that loads in a timely manner and reliably saves the data you input provides a sense of trust.”
DfE Caseworker
What we did
We were tasked with delivering 3 main things. A new minimum viable conversions and transfers process (known as the Manage Academy project), a new minimum viable product for concerns, and ensuring that other services were fit for purpose.
Manage Academy covers everything from schools applying to become an academy until their transfer journey is complete. Whilst concerns covers issues with the way trusts are being run (these could be related to finances, governance or safeguarding).
We worked as part of various blended teams, bringing different specialisms into projects as and when needed.
Getting started
As DfE were already part way through replacing their legacy systems when we arrived, we needed to move quickly to get up-to-speed and identify where we could add the greatest value.
We began by conducting a strategy and business analysis review to understand how new systems could help delivery officers, and developing a performance analysis framework for the digital programme supporting the academisation process.
i) Manage academy – a new conversions and transfers process
This project involved a full redesign and build of the academisation process and includes 3 products which cover different stages in the journey – Apply to Become, Prepare and Complete.
We now have a new academisation digital service for conversions and transfers. At the time of writing, each of the products is in beta and we’ve seen increased adoption this year. 70% of cases have moved over from legacy technology and 283 active users are in the Complete stage.
ii) Record concerns and support for trusts (RECAST)
We have replaced the existing concerns technology with RECAST (Record Concerns and Support for Trusts) to meet the needs of users who record and manage this information and those who report on it.
With well over 1,000 cases recorded annually since the service went into public beta, RECAST has been handed over to DfE service support and is being continuously improved.
iii) Find information about academies and trusts
We designed a minimum viable product for DfE staff to get detailed information about an academy or trust to help inform their decisions, assessments and actions. For example, using Ofsted data to see how an academy has improved since joining a trust to decide if it’s a good fit for another school.
iv) Manage free school projects
We also designed a new project management tool to keep track of complex, long running projects to build and open free schools.
Influencing good practise
When we work with clients we always look for opportunities to improve ways of working in teams and the wider organisation.
As part of the programme, for example, we developed and deployed the Cognitive Walkthrough method for user research to make sure products and services support users with different access needs.
We also implemented a unified approach to Azure hosting and GitHub deployment, which has standardised the technology across teams, simplified and shortened development and release cycles, and significantly improved our security posture. Other programmes within DfE have now adopted the same approach.