When the Support team adds a school in Support for Publish teacher training courses (Support), we use an autocomplete to help users search for schools.
The autocomplete works well for quickly selecting a school, but it requires JavaScript. Not everyone has JavaScript, and it does not always run successfully.
We added a no-JavaScript version of the ‘Add school’ flow, which we can progressively enhance.
How it works
Selecting ‘Add school’ on the schools list page takes the user to a form where they can search for a school, university or college. They do this by entering the school name, unique reference number (URN) or postcode.
Without JavaScript, when the user continues, we show:
- the number of results and the search term in the heading - for example, “7 results found for ‘challoner’”
- a way to change the search if the school they are looking for is not listed, or if there are too many results
- a list of radio options matching their search query - we limit this list to 15 items
We use data provided by Get information about schools (GIAS).
We display the name, town and postcode for each school, university or college in the list. This allows users to choose from similarly named locations correctly.
Selecting a school from the list allows the user to continue and add the school.
We show an error message if the user tries to continue without selecting a school:
Select a school
If the school the user is looking for is not listed or there are no results listed, they can change their search, which takes them back to the initial search form.