Supporting the University of Kent to modernise its education programmes
The situation
The University of Kent was part-way through a major £2.7m Education Modernisation programme. This involved fundamental changes to the academic term and teaching structure, delivered alongside an organisational restructure from divisions to schools.
The programme had two strands. The academic strand focused on engaging staff to support them in adopting a different term structure and redesign modules for different credit weightings. The technical strand was focused on making the necessary changes to the student data system and the downstream systems that rely on student data.
Our role was to lead the technical side of this project, bringing together teams from across the organisation to develop, test and implement the system changes, ready to launch for the 2025/26 academic year.
The technical delivery was constrained by high-stakes structural factors:
Complex, highly customised legacy system - Kent’s Student Data System, built on an on-prem SITS, heavily customised with hard-coded logic.
A complex ecosystem of downstream systems - such as Finance, timetabling and the marketing CRM, all of which required synchronised updates to their data interfaces.
The "Clearing" Deadline - A fixed go-live point in the student record lifecycle, immediately ahead of the annual student record rollover, creating material financial and operational risk.
Organisational Restructure - Delivery taking place during a restructure, with teams changing shape mid-programme.
The issue was not a lack of technical capability, but the absence of a coherent delivery strategy that could be governed at scale.
What we did:
We provided technical leadership to deliver technical change without disrupting the wider academic programme and to make this complex activity visible and understandable to senior leaders and enabling informed decision-making.
Key elements included:
Technical Leadership - we brought together several technical teams, and their specialist resources to create a coherent project team. We ensured that the project’s progress and risks were clear and visible to senior leadership, and secured the institutional support required for delivery.
Governance - We worked within the University’s own governance processes, engaging with relevant committees to gain approval for our plans, and to ensure ownership of changes to process beyond the project.
Operational Management - We supported individual technical team managers to understand and deliver their teams work packages, and managed the £2m technical budget.
The Impact
Successful Delivery - The full scope was delivered on time and under budget.
Risk Mitigation: We confidently managed the project’s risk, which included an update to the student records of nearly 20,000 students just prior to the main clearing period.
Smooth Transition into 2025/26 academic year: The changes made to the student data system worked as designed and supported the organisation as it delivered its new teaching model for the first time.
What did the client think?
Here’s what Project Sponsor said about Jason, our lead consultant on the project:
Jason is outstanding. He helped us bring clarity and confidence to the technical delivery of the Education Modernisation programme I led at the University of Kent.
He brought complex, overlapping challenges together into a coherent programme of change, communicated clearly with stakeholders at all levels, and led the team responsible for actually making the changes with a calm, friendly demeanour. Jason’s involvement ensured successful delivery, on time and on budget. I’d recommend him in the strongest terms without hesitation.
Ben Cosh - Pro Vice Chancellor (Education Modernisation), University of Kent.
