From research with providers we found that for courses offered by large SCITTs and universities we did not have enough data to accurately tell candidates the full story around location. This also applies to growing school direct alliances (for example Trinity TSA).
When we tested with these providers they compared their courses with those of a School Direct. A School Direct course usually has many training locations, leading to many points on a map for each course. These extra locations put School Direct courses closer to more users. In comparison, a university usually has one location – it’s main campus, and a large SCITT will use a set of locations that represent many more schools.
“We want people to see a wide range of partner schools that we work with, for this subject” (video)
(This work was parked to focus on UCAS transition. When providers can manage their locations in one place, it’ll be easier to fix and improve those locations. Map ideas have not been tested with users.)
Partner schools
Partner schools are the schools a training provider works with, they are schools a candidate might be based in for 60 days or more.
We requested a list of partner schools from providers, so we’d have data to explore what good looks like.
Providers will need an easy way to manage their list of partner schools, numbers range from 20 to 1,000+.
There are constraints around how we show partner schools:
- not all schools for next year are known
- this year’s schools give the best illustration but must be caveated
- these schools cannot be broken down by subject, only by phase
- providers do not want to give the impression that people can apply to specific schools
“We have to be careful that someone does not apply to us because they want to work at a specific school … they can only apply to [us]” (video)
Breaking down schools by subject, if possible, can be misleading. For one provider they had 2 biology locations which just happened to be in Walthamstow, someone seeing that and looking from elsewhere might think that’s the only place they could be, which is not right.
“Just doing it by subject is misleading” (video)