In a previous version of our service, we asked the question “Who initiated the academy transfer?”. We asked this question to understand whether the academy transfer happened because of:

  • an involuntary transfer initiated by DfE
  • a voluntary transfer initiated by the academy’s trust

A radio button question called Who initiated the academy transfer? It has 2 options: Department for Education and Outgoing Trust

The answer to this question could be used to help the Department’s Data and Analysis team to report on the reasons for academy transfers.

A bar chart showing the reasons for academy transfers.

User research

Delivery officers (DOs) told us that it didn’t make sense to ask if the outgoing trust (the trust that the academy would transfer from) initiated the transfer. If it was a voluntary transfer, this would have started as a conversion between the outgoing trust and incoming trust (the trust that the academy will transfer to).

DOs also told us that “Who initiated the academy transfer?” was too similar to other questions in our service:

  1. Has this transfer started because RDD, RSSC or ESFA have intervened with the academy or trust?
  2. What type of transfer is it?

A page named Reason for transfer. It includes a radio button question and a text area question.

A radio button question called What type of transfer is it? It has 5 buttons and an additional button underneath an or heading.

What we did

Initially we thought about shortening the Outgoing Trust radio button to Trust. This would make it an accurate representation of the voluntary transfer discussions between outgoing and incoming trusts.

However, this would not resolve the issue of duplicate questions in our service. To give the Data and Analysis team the data they need whilst creating a better experience for DOs, we removed the following questions:

  1. Who initiated the academy transfer?
  2. Has this transfer started because RDD, RSSC or ESFA have intervened with the academy or trust?
  3. Can you provide more detail? (optional)

We replaced them with “What is the reason for this transfer?” and used the reasons for academy transfers categories as the radio button values.

A radio button question called What is the reason for this transfer? It has 3 options: intervention, initiated by trust and sponsor or trust closure.

We also decided to keep the “What type of transfer is it?” question. The Data and Analysis team felt it would validate their own academy transfers data. For example, their data may show that many academies move from one trust to another, but they’re not sure if this is because of 2 trusts merging.

A radio button question called What type of transfer is it? It has 5 buttons and an additional button underneath an or heading.

Next steps

Test if:

  1. The “What is the reason for this transfer?” question makes sense to DOs.
  2. DOs feel there is any duplication between “What is the reason for this transfer?” and “What type of transfer is it?”.

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User research User experience Academies