Question: What happens when you team the market leader in police training with a smarter learning system?
Answer: A doubled exam pass rate for candidates, ten times the amount of business and better learning transfer across the board.
“Thinqi helped us expand our business and secure more customers”
“Work smarter, not harder.”
This is the philosophy for Greg Williams, director of Police Pass, whose business provides training for national exams for detectives and sergeant and inspectors candidates nationwide. Before Thinqi, Police Pass relied on face-to-face ‘crammer’ courses which were run at venues across the country, along with hard copy books.
Since 2010, Police Pass have adopted a blended approach with Thinqi to overcome the challenges of strict security and to reach more of the 44 police forces across England, Wales and Northern Ireland with their talented but small team.
“Thinqi gave us the security we needed and the flexibility to reach a wider customer base due to the enhanced e-learning capability,” says Greg. “We obviously couldn’t be everywhere, so Thinqi helped us reach those hard-to-reach places.”
As a result, in the 12 years since the start of their journey, Police Pass have increased their contracts ten-fold from 2 to 20.
Solving a national problem of staff shortages
There’s a problem within the recruitment of detectives nationally, with an exam pass rate of around only 50%-60%. This means that 40% of the talent pool is failing the process.
Cue Police Pass and Thinqi.
“One particular police force was working with an average pass rate of about 40%,” recalls Greg. “In the two years that we have been working with them as part of a blended learning offering, they have doubled their pass rate from 40% to 80%.
As a result, this force can now put an extra 40% of their students through to the next stage of accreditation. Supported by performance metrics in Thinqi and the expertise of Police Pass, it’s easy to see where students are performing well and which areas need a little more attention before the exam.
Proven learning transfer for better performance
Learning transfer occurs when learners take the knowledge from a learning intervention and apply it to real-life contexts. For Police Pass, this meant ensuring candidates were learning smarter with Thinqi and passing their exams with flying colours.
“We think it’s improved the student experience to help them achieve their goals,” says Greg. “They’re doing this exam to get into the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) by doing the National Investigators Exam (NIE), or they want to further their career by becoming Sergeants or Inspectors. Their success breeds our success, and that’s what Thinqi’s given us.”
Success is the key word here.
From the information they have, Police Pass can confirm that the forces they work with are now 20% above the national average for results. Greg adds: “Our contracted forces that have our full blended offering—including Thinqi, the crammer course, study sessions and textbooks—generally perform better than those forces who just purchase the textbooks or face to face crammer courses.”
Performance management in a click
Who’s performing well, who needs extra help and what do they need help with?
Data can be daunting, which is why Thinqi has designed its Reports functionality with both simplicity and clarity in mind.
“We’re really excited about the Reports functionality in Thinqi and the ability for performance tracking. This is so beneficial for both the candidates and the organisations,” says Greg. “We want to use performance tracking in Thinqi to provide more information to the students and management teams on what people are doing and how successful they are to allow them to prepare for the exam day. The wider community also has the benefit of accredited detectives and leaders within the organisation who are legally competent.”
The data produced with Thinqi’s Reports tool is the perfect way to prove success and approach new opportunities.
The proof is always in the numbers.
“Moving to Thinqi was seamless from a customer perspective”
Does Greg feel he’s made the right decision in selecting Thinqi?
“This was an opportunity to work through our business challenges with Thinqi,” he says. “We’re not generally technical people, but Thinqi provided support for us in other aspects of our business too—for example, linking Thinqi up to our commercial platform, for example…we had a product fit for market in the time that we wanted it to go. Moving from what we had previously to Thinqi was fairly seamless from a customer perspective.”
He adds, “Thinqi is absolutely central to our business. We couldn’t do what we are currently doing without it. Our product is blended and without Thinqi we would be back on the road and in lecture theatres doing what we have done in the past. It’s flexible, it’s cross-device ready, it’s good for us, it’s good for the candidates and it’s reliable.”
With more plans for performance tracking and continuing to reach a wider customer base, we’re excited to keep growing with the great people at Police Pass, who show us time and again how learning smarter, not harder, pays off in the end.
