What is the public journey?
The public journey is a specific series of screens where the public can make a referral about a teacher if they believe that serious misconduct has occurred. It is created on the back of the full employer journey that we previously posted about and we’ve reused a vast majority of the screens where possible.
How does a member of the public use this service?
The public journey tries to help a member of the public to go through the correct procedures if they want to make a referral by asking if they have already contacted the school, governors or the local council.
The referral process should not be the first step in the process and this is reflected in the public journey. Later in the journey we ask for evidence to support the process the member of public has followed so this is a crucial question to avoid confusion and wasted time further in the journey.
What information do we collect from a member of the public?
The key pieces of information we need to create a referral are:
- the name, email and a contact number of the person making the referral
- the name of the teacher the referral is about
- some basic details about the teacher such are as their role, any other duties and the school they worked for
- details about the allegations and some background information on the case so far
- any evidence or documents that support the case
What information have we removed from the public journey?
We had already removed some key employer information such as National Insurance number and previous allegations. After reviewing the questions with the caseworkers, we were able to reduce the information even further.
We had seen some struggles with users understanding the information being asked for and together with the caseworkers we felt that there was a risk that incorrect information could be used which would cause issues with the case later on. The caseworkers contact the school and the correct information can be gathered at this stage.
- We reduced the contact details for the public to a single phone number rather than 4 different options
- We don’t need the teacher’s age or date of birth
- We don’t need any of the teacher’s contact details such as email or phone number
- Removed the allegation summary as we found this was confusing for some users
The task list
Using the same task list as the employer journey, we break up the sections and allow the public to return to their saved answers at any time - so they don’t have to complete their referral in one go.
There is also a check your answers at the end of each section so that users can review or state that they need to come back to the section.
Making it clear what happens with a referral
The member of the public needs to be aware that their name will be used as part of the referral and the teacher will be informed as well.
We need to be sure that the public are aware of how their name will be used so we will be monitoring the analytics on this page to check for any drop offs. Large drop offs will tell us that users have not seen or understood the process and we will need to iterate on the elegibility part of the journey.
What are the risks in simplifying the public journey?
We considered that there are risks on making this flow too simple and quick for a member of the public to fill in. We know that a caseworker only needs to know the following to create a case:
- name of the teacher
- name of the school where the teacher worked
- name and contact details about the referrer
- some details about the allegation
We tried a few variations such as removing the task list and creating a linear journey. However, we also felt that making it too easy might cause issues such as unnecessary referrals. We have tried to strike a balance that we will continue to review through research and feedback when the service is available for the public to use.
What’s next?
We are planning to test the updated public journeys through user research and iterate where needed.
We need to keep a close eye on new cases that are created. We will be working closely with the caseworkers to understand whether there are any gaps or issues with the public flow that we need to improve.
Screenshots
Allegation evidence
Details of the allegation
Teachers role
Your name
