Department for Education and QTS
More than 380,000 eligibility checks completed in the 6 months since launch.
Success rate of QTS awards raised from 54% to 75% under the new service.
Time taken to request further information down to 2-3 minutes.
97% of users rate the service as “easy” or “very easy” to use.
The Department for Education’s ‘Apply for qualified teacher status (QTS) in England’ service assesses the qualifications and experience of teachers who trained outside the UK, to understand whether they’re qualified to teach in England.
If they’re successful, they get a universally recognised status that’s highly regarded in the UK (and a legal requirement for employment in many schools).
The challenge
QTS already applied to 34 countries, but with new, more demanding regulations taking effect from early 2023, along with expanding the service to every country in the world, the service needed a complete overhaul.
We needed to build:
A new eligibility checker and application form that would be easy to use for an audience largely composed of users for whom English is a second language.
A new case management system that was efficient, scalable and capable of meshing with many different educational systems.
Eventually, the service will roll out to almost 200 countries, but many educational authorities work at state level (for example, all 50 US states do things slightly differently). Expand that thought to Australia, Canada and other federal countries, and soon we need a system that can cater for hundreds of variations.
That needs intelligent design, plenty of user research and clear, intuitive content.
“It’s miles ahead. It just seems so much cleaner. Everything is where I would expect it to be. Even the little things are going to make it so much easier for us.”
What we did
Building QTS meant coping with regulations and working practices that were evolving in real time. It was as new to the client as it was to us, so the best way to move forward was to get everyone involved from the outset. Having real users on tap allowed us to understand the problems they needed to solve.
With primary, secondary and tertiary users, testing was a huge part of the project – it was vital to understand user needs and make sure the content was as clear and precise as possible. For applicants, the service could be the start of a new life, while for assessors it carries the responsibility of making the right decision for those applicants.
We worked with 105 participants from 33 countries, taking in different levels of digital ability and English language proficiency. We used a cross section of those who had never heard of QTS, those who were mid-application and those who had been declined.
“It massively moves us forward. We understood what users needed and why. It’s helped us define criteria that we can confidently draw on. If we hadn’t done it with users, it would have all been theoretical.”
Beta assessment and results
In late 2022, the new service went live, slashing assessment times from 10-16 minutes to 2-6 minutes, and reducing the need to ask applicants for further information from 65% to 25%. In early 2023, the new regulations launched for existing countries, plus nine new ones…
…and then in April, we smashed our private beta assessment.
“It’s a remarkable case study. With unwavering determination, an exceptional team orchestrated the emergence of a colossal service, navigating intricate complexities within an impressively short timeframe.”