Explaining the confirmed conversion date
After a conversion has been approved by the advisory board, the caseworker or delivery officer who will complete the project has to arrange a date that the school will open as an academy.
This requires agreement from the school, trust, local authority, the caseworker or delivery officer and any other organisations involved such as the diocese.
The caseworker or delivery officer can then enter the confirmed conversion date in the product.
Why the confirmed conversion date might change
That agreed date may need to change as the project progresses.
It could be for many reasons, including:
- there are complications with legal issues such as land ownership that take longer than expected to resolve
- the local authority is no longer able to meet the agreed date
- the school or trusts asks for the date to be changed
- there are outstanding tasks the school or trust are unlikely to complete in time
Incorrect opening date information can lead to fines
It is important a new date is agreed and the information in the product is updated to match this. That information is used to organise funding for the academy.
Early release of that funding can lead to penalties for DfE.
How users can change the conversion date
If a conversion date has been confirmed as part of the external stakeholder kick-off task, a grey button will appear towards the top of the task list.
That button is only visible once a conversion date has been confirmed. It will not appear until the action to agree the conversion date in the external stakeholder kick-off task is completed.
Users click a secondary action button on the task list
This button can be used to start the process of changing the confirmed conversion date.
The user is then taken to a page where they can enter the new date. This should have already been agreed with the school, trust, diocese and local authority.
The user can also enter a reason for the change to the conversion date in a free text field.
Once they have entered the information and clicked the primary action button to save the change, the user sees a confirmation page.
This tells the user that the change has been made, that the change will alter where the conversion appears of the list of opening academies and that they can change the date again any time they need to.
Helping funding teams access and use accurate information about project progress
Changing the conversion date is an important step in making sure that the information the funding teams have is accurate.
Currently the user will update spreadsheets that are shared with funding teams. These spreadsheets tell the funding teams which schools are on track to convert on time.
The funding teams use this information to prepare letters and funding that the academy will receive.
This process involves multiple uses and duplications of data in multiple documents. We believe we can supply the funding teams with the information they need in our product.
Removing spreadsheets
Our plan is to take in the conversion date date and, along with other useful things, display that to the funding teams in the product.
That should remove the need for these multiple spreadsheets that are shared with or email to different people and teams.
Instead, this will provide all users with a simple to use single source of accurate information that reacts in real time.