UK Department of Education
Lean education policy design in Covid-19
Advising and supporting remote education policy during the pandemic when fast-paced informed decision-making was a priority.
I lead teams united across digital and policy, delivering on remote education aims using lean practices and evidence-based policy design during these pressured times.
The client
DFE is the 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.
On the announcement of lockdown in the UK in March 2020 the Department needed to quickly respond to the demand for remote education. This resulted in rapidly dialled up new programmes combining policy and digital teams to deliver new policies, for schools, teachers and parents including guidance, tools and support for the changing national educational landscape.
My role
To provide strategic support and specialist advice to policymakers and senior leaders and help the department meet the demands of unfolding events.
To lead teams connected across digital delivery and policy.
To unite and enable digital service and policy change to go live at pace and quickly iterate.
To provide evidence to support informed decision-making under pressured timeframes with lean teams.
The work
Scope
To build and lead multidisciplinary teams across service design and digital delivery capable of rapidly adapting to changing policy. This included providing digital, organisational and policy advice and recommendations, as well as leading necessary evidenced-based research to support informed policy decision-making under rapidly changing conditions.
I was asked to help the department take a people-centred approach to decision-making. Keeping students, teachers and school’s needs at the forefront of policy consideration and digital output within this pressured environment.
Description
During this time worked with two national policy programmes. Initially a ‘remote education’ stream was established which was designed to create national remote educational policy. This involved leadership of a fast-paced digital team working to get a national policy for ‘Remote Education’ live at pace while supporting cross-programme user-centred evidence coming from multiple specialist teams.
A second programme called ‘Get help with technology’ provided computers, tablets and Internet to young people in deprived households to enable remote learning and social care. This involved supporting the programme's wifi offering including daily management of an existing service, researching wifi policy needs as evidence and recommending next steps for ongoing support. As well as providing necessary expert digital and UCD advice across the programme.
Outcomes
Building (in a matter of hours) a team to deliver digital remote education policy that connected online delivery to policy makers.
Delivering (within days) guidance for teachers, parents and schools with ongoing continous policy improvement as the situation unfolded.
Building closer effective relationships with policymakers and digital teams.
The ‘Get help with Technology’ programme successfully delivered 500,000 laptops and tablets for children and young people. This work successfully advised on internet needs for deprived young people and schools across social care and education guiding policy decisions for ongoing support.
Key activies
Effective lean practice: Adapting as the situation unfolded advising and leading the programme and policymakers to go live for multiple. This included lean architecture, operational processes (from ministerial sign-off to live), a fast-paced release schedule and continuous user-centred feedback loops.
Lean policy design sprint: Used to test and validate policy options with schools, teachers and parents within 6 weeks. To give evidence-based policy recommendations for ‘wifi’ policy decisions within the fast-paced environment that otherwise would have been unavailable.
Triumvirate collaborative leadership: To meet the needs of rapid dial-up of remote education (with Simon Pearson, product and Ed White, delivery) this allowed us to meet the demanding pace of the work with continuous changeable delivery conditions.