Course content we will receive in a feed from UCAS
Assumptions about content we will receive from UCAS based on existing course data.
- Course title, quality assured by UCAS to meet their standards (eg subject)
- A list of subjects the course is associated with
- Whether there are part time or full time vacancies
- The route – school direct, school direct salaried, SCITT or higher education
- The qualification but with caveats (QTS, Postgraduate, Professional)
- Campuses/locations associated with each course:
- Name
- Campus code
- Full or part time vacancies
- Address or region
- Applications open date
- Course start month (not day)
- Accrediting provider
- Training provider name
- Training provider contact details – address, email, website
- Age range (primary, secondary or middle years only)
Further information required
Excluding free text fields, we also need, for each course:
- Fees
- Salary (if salaried)
- Confirmation of QTS/PGCE with QTS status
- Precise age range
- Any schools not listed
- Length of full time and part time courses
- The name of the main site (first campus) if it differs from the provider name
- Do SCITTs use universities to accredit PGCE aspect of course
Folding multiple UCAS courses into one
Try having one page per subject/provider combination. One search result and page per provider gives a space to explain the different preferences or options available for that provider. Untested hypothesis: Users are making a choice about who will provide their course. Then expressing a preference.
| Route | Needs folding into single course |
|---|---|
| Higher Education | Nothing |
| SCITT | Qualification |
| School Direct | Qualification, Salary, Schools |
Folding courses in the SCITT and higher education routes
Higher education courses are almost all PGCE. There is one course per subject already. No folding is required.
SCITT courses are self-accrediting, they may partner with a university for PGCE aspects of a course but this does not appear to be classified as accreditation. A few duplicate courses around qualification, these should be easy to fold into a single course.
Folding School Direct courses
All the folding complexity lives within this route.
Fold on school, then on salary, then on qualification.
Folding on salary
Salaried courses are always presented as their own course on UCAS. Considering a school that has 8 places available, 4 funded with salary and 4 not – it would seem appropriate to merge these two courses into one.
Folding on schools
Where schools have been given their own subject course by their training provider, these can be combined into a single course – as though they were one course on UCAS with multiple campus options.
Salaries and schools
If there are schools for a salaried course and different schools for unsalaried, how can that be represented? When we show “4 miles to nearest school” in search results, that may not be for a salaried school – prescient if a user has filtered by salary.
Unfolding for apply
We need to communicate how to apply to a variant accurately. eg Which school is available for what, what does and does not have vacancies, what the course codes are – if the choice is represented on UCAS as a separate course.