Case Study
Heritage Schools: Strengthening a national education programme through a streamlined, accessible digital platform.
Client: Historic England
Introduction
The Heritage Schools programme, led by Historic England, helps young people connect with the history and identity of their local area. At its core is the Heritage Schools Award Hub – where schools showcase how they embed heritage in teaching to gain recognition.
As long-term partners of the Hub, we were tasked with elevating the system to make the entire award process simpler and provide resources that help bring local heritage into the classroom.
The Challenge
How do you take a working platform and make it more engaging, accessible and scalable without disruption?
The Hub already played a vital role but expectations had grown.
Educators wanted a smoother submission process across devices and file types.
The Heritage Schools team needed stronger tools to track, assess and give feedback.
There was also an opportunity to make the Hub a home for heritage-focused teaching resources.
This was about enhancing solid foundations to create a sustainable, future-ready platform.
“The enhanced Heritage Schools Award Hub has provided far greater accessibility to the award to a wider range of schools across the country.
This is vital to the aims and legacy of Heritage Schools, which is to support teachers in using local heritage in the curriculum and ensure young people can benefit from the positive impacts of engaging with the heritage on their doorstep.”
The Process
We applied our proven 5-stage Beacon process to ensure alignment with programme goals and smooth delivery within a tight timeline.
In the Define stage, we ran stakeholder workshops, carried out a technical audit and agreed on a shared vision. During Validate, we co-designed enhancements with the Heritage Schools team and confirmed acceptance criteria. The Build phase delivered improvements to submission workflows, a new theme design and accessibility upgrades.
For Launch, we carried out user testing, training and staged deployment ahead of the new academic year. Finally, Scale ensured continuity of hosting, reporting and support to underpin future growth.
Our close relationship with Historic England meant we could deliver at pace while managing risk proactively.
The Product
The enhanced Hub now provides an easy-to-use award entry process that can be completed in stages and supports multiple evidence types.
Interfaces were redesigned to be clear and intuitive, catering for busy educators with varying levels of digital confidence.
Administrative functions were refined to streamline review, status tracking and feedback. Dedicated training for educators and embedded resources are now available directly within the platform, all in line with WCAG accessibility standards.
This is not just a submission system – it is a digital foundation for a national movement that celebrates local heritage.
The Platform
We enhanced the existing WordPress + LearnDash infrastructure, avoiding unnecessary rebuilds and ensuring continuity.Key technical improvements included optimised upload reliability for images, video and other file types, the development of a new on-brand theme, improved mobile responsiveness, and refined admin dashboards for the Heritage Schools team.
Everything was designed to be sustainable, user-centred and future-ready.
The Rollout
Following a successful pilot, the new Hub was launched at the start of the academic year. By working in sprints and collaborating closely with the Heritage Schools team, we ensured a smooth transition with zero downtime.
The result is a platform that supports educators, empowers the Heritage Schools team, and strengthens Historic England’s mission to create connected communities through heritage in education.
“We are absolutely delighted with the new hub. Candle Digital worked closely with us every step of the way and took time to really understand what we wanted.
They provided the team at Historic England with support to ensure we understood what the possibilities were and inspired us with suggestions and options that we hadn’t considered.
They are wonderful to work with and really care about their work and their clients, and we really couldn’t be happier with the result.”
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