Skills Funding Agency (formerly LSC)

Background

Working with the Skills Funding Agency (formerly the Learning and Skills Council (LSC)) and their strategic partners, Postcode Anywhere was asked to provide services to facilitate launching of the pilot scheme for the Learner Registration Service (LRS), later to be rolled out across the entire education sector to include schools, sixth form Colleges, FE and HE establishments in England. The Learner Registration Service pilot scheme is an internet-based service which enables educational partners to securely store learner details and to generate a Unique Learner Number (ULN) for anyone in education or training in England over the age of 14.

The business need

The overall aim of the LRS initiative is to enable students to build up an individual lifelong learning profile citing their participation in education and achievements, which they can access and which can be accessed by other authorised parties (such as, for example, education providers) and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the education sector.

Why Postcode Anywhere?

Postcode Anywhere was asked to provide prototype functionality to enable users of the Learner Registration Service to generate a Unique Learner Number (ULN) with provision for securely recording personal data such as name, date of birth and address details, for identification and traceability purposes. It was also necessary for the company to pass the LSC’s stringent security tests and attempted hacks due to the sensitive personal data involved in the project.

The company built an interface that enabled the rapid capture, storage, sharing and updating of Student records. The ULN ensures each student has a unique identifier that prohibits the capture of duplicate records and provides an “audit trail” for every student.

Once the prototyping was done, the project was handed to the LSC’s (then) technology partner, Xansa, where we assisted them in the development of the final project and continued to provide support. Postcode Anywhere has an unblemished vendor history from the inception of the project to date, where we have delivered consistent and friendly levels of customer service with responsive technical support. We have also developed and maintained excellent working relationship with the LSC and its partners.

Benefits

The benefit to the LSC is that the project has provided a user friendly, simple interface that is easily used and delivers the requirements of the project. Such a solution allows users to be actively engaged in the process of their data management. In this fashion, a non-dictatorial, interactive and mutually beneficial relationship was initiated between the LSC and the people who use its services.

The bottom line

Organisations such as the LSC have realised the benefits of rapid prototyping to engage partners and build successful solutions swiftly and for good value. Postcode Anywhere’s uniquely agile development process, infrastructure and skills enabled the LRS prototyping phase to achieve a successful outcome.