Who we spoke to
5 x public beta users
1 x private beta user
Of which:
- 1 x Head of training
- 1 x SCITT business manager
- 1 x ITT Coordinator
- 1 x Senior Teacher and ITT Lead
- 1 x ITT/ECF Lead
Of which:
- 1 x SCITT
- 3 x MAT
- 1 x religious school
- 1 x Local Authority Maintained
Goals of the research
- Test users’ understanding of the service and how it works based on our content iterations for ‘make a claim’ and ‘add a mentor’ journeys (main iterations included revised content for hours of training and start page content to improve users’ understanding of how the service works)
- Gain an understanding of the needs of Multi Academy Trusts
- Gain a deeper understanding of users’ behaviour when using the service – in particular, when users will claim throughout the claim period
- Test the journey for users that have a more significant number of mentors and work with more than one provider
Key insights
Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) have different needs depending on their size and structure
An emerging theme in previous research rounds was that (MATs) expect to be able to submit claims centrally on behalf of other schools within their Trust. Within round 3, most schools spoken to were MATs to explore this need further.
We learnt that this need is very dependent on the size and makeup of the Trust. For example, some MAT participants we spoke to said they would want to claim an individual school level, while the trust’s CEO would want an overview of the claims across all schools.
Further research is required to determine the different types of MATs and their personas post-go-live.
Confusion around what they are claiming for
Some participants needed help understanding the funding. They thought that they were claiming funding for the time spent training trainees. Users risk not receiving the full benefit of the funding if they do not understand what they are claiming.
Users continue to get confused as to where they go to claim after adding a mentors
After adding mentors, no specific call to action directs users to make a claim. They must navigate to ‘claims’ themselves.
The primary navigation is ordered with ‘Claims’ first and ‘Mentors’ second. This is the opposite of what we initially asked them to do: add mentors and then create a claim.
The journey for making separate claims for mentors, relating to different providers, causes confusion
Once users have submitted a claim with a selection of mentors for a provider, they are unsure what the next step is to claim a separate provider and include different mentors.
Another problem they experienced was once making a different claim. Because we display all mentors and keep the ones they have already claimed for, they said figuring out which mentors they have already claimed for would get confusing.
Next steps – post go live
Throughout our research, we have identified some clear areas for further study. These areas include:
- Understanding the needs of Multi Academy Trusts (MAT)
- Understanding the needs of providers and School Centred Teacher Training providers (SCITTs)
- Further testing of more ‘complex’ journeys where there are multiple providers and a more significant number of mentors
This research will take place post private beta launch from May 2024 onwards.