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Early career framework documentation 🦒

Documentation This site is used internally in the Department for Education.

Roadmap

Why we're sharing our roadmap publicly

This document explains what we're working on to improve and rebuild the digital services that facilitate the early career framework (ECF) policy reforms. These digital services are named Register early career teachers.

It sets out what we're working on now, what will come next, and what we might pursue later.

By sending this out publicly, we hope to:

  • give direction and vision to our team
  • be transparent about what we're working on and why
  • prioritise what we need to work on and when
  • gather more feedback about the work we're aiming to do

Our objectives

All of these items of work are related to our objectives as a team. Our objectives are structured to enable us to meet the Teaching CPD vision of services serving their core purposes and being flexible enough to adapt to future change and opportunities.

  1. Reduce workload for schools when registering early career teachers and their mentors for training 🏫
  2. Improve data quality and the flexibility of the services by changing the data model and migrating data cleanly to Register early career teachers 👾
  3. Better meet lead provider needs by showing the right data over the Lead provider API, improving documentation and updating validation rules ☁️
  4. Improve understanding of financial information internally and make sure payments are calculated correctly 💰
  5. Ensure the successful development of the Register early career teacher services by planning for dependencies, risks and communications 🗒️
  6. Minimise time and money sent on support tasks by creating improved joint support and finance tooling 🦸
  7. Improve how data on ECF is reported and create performance metrics for the new Register early career teachers services 📊
  8. Reduce confusion for users by helping them understand how the Register early career teacher services are structured, the service's purposes and their own responsibilities ✏️
  9. Build services that are safe, protect privacy and are tested and documented well 🔨
  10. Save time for appropriate bodies to submit induction data for early career teachers and check relevant training information in 1 place ⏲️

The roadmap

Now 🏃

  • exploring using DfE sign in for school users and allowing multiple accounts, so we can improve their access to the service
  • improving how an early career teacher or mentor is registered, so we save schools time and improve data accuracy
  • improving how records for ECTs and mentors are viewed, so we can remind them of essential actions they need to take and can make changes to records easily
  • designing a prototype and setting up the infrastructure for a service where appropriate bodies can submit induction data, so we improve the accuracy of our data and can later consolidate registration for schools
  • setting up processes for how we will migrate data from the legacy service to our new service, so that we can migrate data from ECF1 to ECF2 efficiently and cleanly

Next ➡️

  • improving how early career teachers are transferred between different schools, so that all users have the information they need and can make changes easily
  • considering how to indicate when early career teachers have left for other reasons, so we can reduce confusion for schools and lead providers
  • start building support tooling to help with registration, so that our support users have the autonomy they need to quickly and simply aid schools
  • building a service for appropriate bodies to submit induction data, so that we can maintain induction processes and consolidate our data
  • getting ready for the changes in policy for 2025, so that our digital services are up to date and can maintain registration of ECTs

Later 🔮

  • improving the data we send over the lead provider API, so lead providers can submit the data they need and have it validated correctly, saving them time and improving our data quality
  • improving the API documentation, so lead provider users can see the guidance applicable to them and understand it easily
  • calculating financial information, so that we can pay lead providers the correct amounts for training
  • enabling appropriate bodies to check training data for early career teachers, in the same service where they submit induction data, so we can save them time and improve data accuracy