Context
When researching the needs of larger providers, we found the process of attaching placement schools to courses from a long list of schools difficult and time-consuming.
Pain points
On the ‘Basic details’ tab, the list of attached schools can be very long for larger providers.
They found this challenging because:
it made it harder to see the information below the list
they couldn’t easily tell how many schools were attached, which they wanted to see when comparing courses
The page where they attach schools to courses lists all the schools on their account, which can be very long.
They found it difficult to maintain an accurate list of schools against each course because:
the list included both primary and secondary schools
the ‘Select all schools’ feature did not help due to the point above
they had to use ‘Control + F’ to find a specific school
they had to scroll a lot to get to the button at the end of the page to continue
the name of the school was repeated in the address
they lacked confidence that the changes they wanted to make were applied
some providers had a large number of schools imported from Register last year (as part of the improving schools data) that they don’t regularly work with
For some larger providers, the concept of attaching schools to courses to power the location search in Find is not helpful. They would prefer to select the regions they operate within.
User need
Larger providers need a way to:
easily compare the number of schools attached to each course
quickly find schools in a long list
confidently add or remove schools to a course
What we did
We improved how providers can view the basic details of a course by:
moving schools into a details component when there are 6 or more schools attached to a course
adding the number of schools attached to a course
To improve how to find a school in a long list, we originally tested a design where providers could filter by education phase and region:
When we tested this with providers, they did not find the filters helpful:
they were confused between the ability to show schools attached to the course, and the ability to select all schools
they expected irrelevant education phases to not be displayed in the list, rather than having to filter them out
many only operate in a certain region, or wanted a more granular way to filter by area such as county or local authority
So, we iterated on the design and removed the filters.
We improved how providers could quickly find a school in a long list by:
adding the ability to search for a school in the list
removing the duplicated school names from the address
reducing the number of schools displayed, and providing the ability to show all schools
To improve how changes were made and applied, we originally tested a design where providers would add or remove a school they searched for, then decide if they want to add more schools or finish:
When we tested this with providers, they were very confused with the question.
They expected to be able to make multiple change to the list of schools, instead of having to select ‘No, I want to add more placement schools’ each time. So we iterated on the design and removed this question.
We improved how changes were made and applied to give them confidence by:
displayed a live summary of the changes made
updating the number on the ‘Basic details’ tab to reflect the changes made
User testing
We tested the designs with larger providers in May 2026, and it tested well.
Participants found it easier to see the number of schools on a course, find courses using the search, and feel confident the updates have been made.
Next steps
We will be building these changes into the service and aim have them live for the rollover period this year.
We will investigate whether we can display schools with the relevant education phase on courses, such as displaying only primary schools on primary courses. For this we need to use the school's data in Get Information About Schools (GIAS).
We will investigate preventing providers from having schools imported from Register that they don’t regularly work with.