Context

Site information means where a new free school will be temporarily and / or permanently based.

Most site information is managed by colleagues in Capital, using their Construct product.

Regions Group needs to record some information for presumption route free school projects:

  • full address of any temporary sites
  • full address of any permanent sites
  • start date of site occupation
  • when planning permission has been given

The addresses and start date of occupation come from the trust or local authority.

The planning permission date is in Construct and not currently visible to project leads - they have to ask Capital colleagues for this.

User needs

As a project lead (PL), I need to record and access information regarding the site where a new school will be temporarily/permanently situated, so that I can prepare relevant free schools programme documentation.

As a PL, I need to record and access information regarding the site where a new school will be temporarily/permanently situated, so that I can prepare relevant free schools programme documentation.

As an Academies and Operational Practice Unit (AOPU) team member, I need site information for a proposed free school so that I can work with Ofsted to arrange an inspection visit.

Designing a solution

We had a 'site information' placeholder summary card in the 'About the project' section of projects. We kept this card as the place where PLs would start their 'enter site information' journey.

Image included in the h1 'Designing a solution' section on this post: design-histories.education.gov.uk/manage-free-school-projects/site-information

We created additional temporary and permanent site summary cards, as PLs need to enter information about both the temporary and permanent sites.

Image included in the h1 'Designing a solution' section on this post: design-histories.education.gov.uk/manage-free-school-projects/site-information

Image included in the h1 'Designing a solution' section on this post: design-histories.education.gov.uk/manage-free-school-projects/site-information

Image included in the h1 'Designing a solution' section on this post: design-histories.education.gov.uk/manage-free-school-projects/site-information

We referred to address designs created by Complete conversions, transfers and changes (Complete) and Find information about academies and trusts (FIAT), which PLs also use. Both Complete and FIAT include the postcode in the address summary list row.

Complete:

Image included in the h1 'Designing a solution' section on this post: design-histories.education.gov.uk/manage-free-school-projects/site-information

FIAT:

Image included in the h1 'Designing a solution' section on this post: design-histories.education.gov.uk/manage-free-school-projects/site-information

We decided to keep postcodes separate from addresses in our summary lists. This is consistent with how data is entered in Free Schools Store (FSS) and will make it easier to migrate data from FSS into our product.

Future work

  • test whether this design meets PLs' and AOPU's needs
  • include the postcode value in the same summary row as address (to be consistent with Complete and FIAT)
  • support PLs to access Construct data without needing to contact Capital colleagues