Posts by this team
School improvement plans
Although not a direct part of the process of becoming an academy, schools can get some initial support from trusts through school improvement plans. As such, we added the ability for schools to record these within Prepare.
Prepare conversions and transfers
4 October 2024
Grouped projects
After learning that users often work with multiple schools/projects together, due to them going to advisory board on the same date, we added the ability to group projects together.
Prepare conversions and transfers
4 October 2024
Sending projects to Complete conversions, transfers and changes
Prepare and Complete are separate products in the same service. Users work on a project in Prepare, then have to manually recreate it in Complete once it is approved. This is wastes time, entering information we already have. We're now automating it.
Prepare conversions and transfers
3 October 2024
Capturing why conversion or transfer dates change
The Data Analytics Unit (DAU) investigate and report on the causes of project delays. This is how we added that data to Prepare for the DAU.
Prepare conversions and transfers
23 August 2024
Revoking a directive academy order
Schools are issued a directive academy order if conversion is the most viable way to improve. In some cases those orders can be revoked if the school improves before converting. We designed a journey to help DfE record when this happens.
Prepare conversions and transfers
24 June 2024
Adding more decision makers
There have been changes to who can make decisions about whether local authority schools can convert, or academies should transfer. We made some quick iterations to how those decisions are recorded in Prepare to reflect this change to policy.
Prepare conversions and transfers
27 May 2024
Exporting data from Prepare
Catering for teams who use the information delivery officers enter to organise funding and update information about academies and trusts.
Prepare conversions and transfers
9 April 2024
Updating the Prepare project lists
Why we updated the layout of the Prepare project lists.
Prepare conversions and transfers
12 March 2024
Adding Form a MAT projects
We needed to provide users with the ability to add new form a MAT projects in Prepare.
Prepare conversions and transfers
12 March 2024
Withdrawn status
In addition to the possible advisory board decisions, we needed to add the option for users to flag a project as having been withdrawn.
Prepare conversions and transfers
12 March 2024
Academy order date
We added the ability to record the date the AO (academy order) is sent.
Prepare conversions and transfers
12 March 2024
Sponsored conversions with no trust
Change made to allow users to create a new conversion without selecting an incoming trust.
Prepare conversions and transfers
12 March 2024
Updated transfer routes
In order to capture all the reasons why a transfer may take place to match KIM, we added an additional question to the ‘Features of the transfer’ screen.
Prepare conversions and transfers
12 March 2024
Iterating the "Prepare your trust template" task
This task referenced and pointed users towards the technology we are replacing. This needed updating before we could begin to move away from the old process.
Prepare conversions and transfers
29 January 2024
Form a MAT
Designs for the Form a MAT journey, where multiple schools come together to form a new multi academy trust.
Prepare conversions and transfers
22 September 2023
Sponsored conversions in Prepare conversions and transfers
Users can now create sponsored conversion projects from within our product.
Prepare conversions and transfers
22 September 2023
Sponsored conversions vs. the task list
Adding the latest feature involved a bit more work than we anticipated.
Prepare conversions and transfers
14 June 2023
Adding status tags to Key Stage Data pages
We had feedback that it would be useful to users to differentiate between 'Provisional', 'Revised' and 'Final' data.
Prepare conversions and transfers
6 March 2023
Create new sponsored conversion project
This is the journey users can take to create a new sponsored conversion project within the new service.
Prepare conversions and transfers
6 March 2023
Annex B form tab
For sponsored conversions we cannot pull through data from the Annex B form in the same way we can with the school application form. So we needed to come up with an alternative design.
Prepare conversions and transfers
6 March 2023
Access the service
We want to guide internal users who don't have access to Prepare conversions and transfers.
Prepare conversions and transfers
9 January 2023
Page not found
What to show users when the page path doesn't exist.
Prepare conversions and transfers
9 January 2023
Transfers legal requirements
We assumed that certain legal requirements need to be met for academy transfers.
Prepare conversions and transfers
22 December 2022
Rebranding our service
We will rebrand Prepare conversions and transfers with DfE branding.
Prepare conversions and transfers
2 December 2022
Refinements - record a decision
What we’ve learnt from testing our record a decision feature with users.
Prepare conversions and transfers
28 November 2022
School budget information
Making this information clearer to delivery officers.
Prepare conversions and transfers
28 November 2022
Cookies
Changes to our cookies banners and policies.
Prepare conversions and transfers
28 November 2022
Filtering transfers projects
We created a feature that allows users to search for a transfers project.
Prepare conversions and transfers
17 October 2022
Filtering conversions projects
We created a feature that allows users to filter conversions projects.
Prepare conversions and transfers
14 October 2022
Assigning a project
We created a feature that allows team leads to assign conversions projects to delivery officers.
Prepare conversions and transfers
10 October 2022
Empty state
What to show users when there are no results after filtering projects.
Prepare conversions and transfers
5 October 2022
Team leads research
We tested our project filters and assignment prototype with Regions Group team leads.
Prepare conversions and transfers
3 October 2022
General information - transfers
We needed to explain to users what data we pulled into our transfers projects.
Prepare conversions and transfers
27 September 2022
Transfers project reference number
We made a small but significant change to project reference numbers.
Prepare conversions and transfers
27 September 2022
Key stage data
We needed to present the latest available key stage data to delivery officers.
Prepare conversions and transfers
27 September 2022
New service name
We decided to present our two Manage an academy services as one.
Prepare conversions and transfers
23 September 2022
Equalities impact assessments (EIAs)
Delivery officers need to declare if an equality impact assessment has been considered.
Prepare conversions and transfers
21 September 2022
Features of the transfer
We removed some questions from our Features of the transfer section in response to user feedback.
Prepare conversions and transfers
20 September 2022
Benefits and risks – user research
What we’ve learnt from testing our benefits and risks section with users.
Prepare conversions and transfers
30 June 2022
Recording a decision
How we designed a journey to help delivery officers log the decisions made by the department about a potential conversion or transfer.
Prepare conversions and transfers
28 June 2022
Designing a meaningful way to identify transfers projects
We iterated on listing projects by removing the constraint of an incoming and outgoing trust name.
Prepare conversions and transfers
8 April 2022
Benefits and risks
Why we changed a service task name from Benefits and other factors.
Prepare conversions and transfers
10 February 2022
Set transfer dates
Giving an option for users to declare date unknown.
Prepare conversions and transfers
27 October 2021
Choosing a variant
After several research sessions with the main user type, we came to a conclusion.
Prepare conversions and transfers
31 March 2021
Project overview
A design for the projects overview page.
Prepare conversions and transfers
31 March 2021
Variants
Exploring potential variations on homepage styles.
Prepare conversions and transfers
1 March 2021
Pre-HTB prototype version 1
The internal service schools will use to become academies, from application to academy opening.
Prepare conversions and transfers
12 February 2021
Academy transfers prototype
A prototype called Manage trusts and academy schools.
Prepare conversions and transfers
11 February 2021