At the start of the service we ask whether the user is making a referral as an employer or a member of the public.
We then ask employers whether:
- their allegation is about a teacher
- the teacher was employed in England
- the allegation is about serious misconduct
The employer cannot continue to use the service if they say no to any of these questions. If they say yes or that they are not sure, they continue to a page which tells them what will happen after they make a referral.
Employers rarely say no to the questions. For example, only 6% of employers say that their allegation is not about serious misconduct.
The content in this part of the service was written primarily for members of the public. We reviewed the content to make sure that it will also make sense to employers.
What we changed
We changed the content on the page which employers reach if their allegation is not about a teacher. We did not need to change the content on the pages which employers reach if they say no to the other questions.
We also changed the content on the page telling employers what will happen after they make a referral.
The allegation is not about a teacher
If the user’s allegation is not about a teacher, we previously suggested that they may want to make a complaint to the school instead.
This is not appropriate for an employer, so we’ve changed the content. We now just tell the employer that they cannot use the service because the allegation is not about a teacher.
What will happen after the employer makes a referral
After the user has confirmed that the allegation is about serious misconduct, we show a page which explains what will happen after they make a referral.
The content previously said that the user’s name and allegation will be sent to “the teacher and their employer”. This does not make sense if the user has been the teacher’s employer.
We’ve changed the content to say “the teacher and any other employers”.
Further considerations
We considered telling users to contact the police if a child is in danger. This is mentioned on the service start page.
However, we know that employers normally make a referral a long time after allegations were initially made. They will already have followed their complaints process before making a referral. So if a child was in danger they would already have contacted the police.
We also considered making more significant changes to the journey for employers. Since we know that employers rarely say no to the questions we ask, we considered removing the questions and replacing them with a single page saying what allegations can be handled by the service.
We decided not to do this for now. We’d like to know more about why employers say no to the questions before simplifying the journey.