UK Department of Education
User-centred service practice in teacher policy
Supporting senior leaders to investigate teacher career policy using a user-centred service journey approach to policy design.
This work formed part of several projects while I was at the Department for Education, within teacher services in 2019. The policy focus was to better understand recruitment and retention across the teaching workforce.
The client
The Department for Education (DFE) is the ministerial department responsible for children and education in England. It sets national education policy for 12m students and 24k schools from early years to further education. The Teacher Services Directorate covers teacher policy for 567k teachers nationally.
My role
To form, set up, get buy-in and lead the service and policy design stream investigating teacher recruitment and retention.
To demonstrate and validate the value of collaborative service, digital and policy workstreams.
The work
Scope
Open working 3-month service policy investigation with broad stakeholder engagement reporting in across 4 areas of leadership, with a small multidisciplinary research team with skills across research, digital, policy and design.
Description
Investigations used a user-centred journey-led approach across the teacher career lifecycle. Starting with teacher recruitment, ‘becoming a teacher’ through to retention across the entire career lifecycle from ‘teaching‘ to ‘retiring’.
This work crossed multiple directorates and channels of leadership across policy, digital and corporate expertise with a wide range of stakeholders at all levels
Outcomes
Initial engagement was hugely successful with 4 directors and upward of 50 people across disciplines joining sessions.
This work helped to demonstrate value and set a precedent for connected projects that united policy, digital and analytical capabilities on big policy issues.
Unfortunately due to COVID-19 priorities, this work was put on hold. However, the same approaches were used in addressing COVID-19 priorities, including in policy thinking and ways of working.
Key activies
Building stakeholder engagement: Forming collaborative practice and buy-in across a wide multi-level stakeholder base including educational expertise, professions and digital delivery.
Value of new practices: Demonstrating the value and potential of new practices (eg. digital, service design and user-centred) to policymakers and leaders.
Service-led approach: Supporting policy teams and decision-makers to form a united user-centred view of the problem via diagrams, reporting and explanations.
New ways of working: Demonstrating best practice ways of working including working in open, multi-disciplinary teams, and collaborative policy design.