The content that appears below the ‘Locations’ subheading in the ‘School placements’ section on course pages had the potential to be misleading for some candidates.
When a provider assigns locations to a course, we display a table listing the locations and their vacancies. We show a line of content above the table, letting the candidate know they can select one of the locations when they apply.
While it is true that candidates can (and must) select one location when they apply, it does not guarantee that they will be placed in the school they have selected.
What we changed
To avoid misleading candidates, we wanted to make it clear that the selection they make when they apply is simply to give the provider an indication of where they would like to be placed. We also updated some of the content in the ‘Where you will train’ Get Into Teaching advice box to make it more accurate.
School placements
We updated the content above the table in the ‘School placements’ section.
You can select one of the following locations to indicate a preferred placement when you apply.
Where you will train
If the course is run by a higher education institution (HEI) or school centred initial teacher training (SCITT), we show an ‘Advice from Get Into Teaching’ box with guidance about school placements. We say that the candidates cannot pick where they will be placed. In changing the content above the ‘School placements’ section, this content no longer contradicts other static information on the course page.
We updated the content that is displayed in this section if a SCITT runs the course. We changed:
- ‘course’ to ‘training provider’ - it’s the training provider that organises school placements, not the course
- ‘will try to place you in schools you can commute to’ to ‘will place you in schools you can travel to’ - removing ‘try’ avoids the possibility of candidates thinking that they could be placed in schools that would be too difficult to travel to
Future considerations
More research is needed to find out the value of asking candidates to select one placement when they apply for a course. We need to find out how much or how little candidate preference influences provider behaviour. In the meantime, we could add content to the page where we ask the candidate to select a placement to remind them that this is a preference only.
We also need more research into how providers use locations in Publish. Our analysis so far indicates that there are inconsistencies in this area. For example, some providers may list all locations while others display none. Some providers use the free text box to list placements and explain how placements work, while others use this sparingly.