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The TEL design system is a collection of building blocks and standards. It brings together agreed-upon components and usage guidance, all of which have been created by designers and developers working on TEL.

How this fits with the wider NHS design system

Your general starting point should still be the wider NHS design system, which is aimed at all national and local NHS services.

The TEL design system has been created to complement the main design system. It covers design principles and components that are specifically tailored to TEL platforms, such as The Learning Hub (powered by Moodle) and the bespoke Digital Learning Solutions (DLS) platform.

When we find our work could have applications beyond our educational platforms, we contribute those findings and ideas back to the wider NHS design system.


Choose your tech stack

We provide coded components in different formats depending on your project's architecture:

1. TEL frontend (This repository)

For standard web projects, we provide core HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Nunjucks macros. Check the Setup guides to understand the project structure and how to install these dependencies.

2. Razor components

If you are building a .NET application, we maintain dedicated libraries of Razor components. Because the TEL design system builds on top of the NHS.UK design system, we provide 2 separate repositories:


How to contribute

There are 2 main ways to work with this documentation, depending on what you need to do:

For developers (Local setup)

If you are building new code components or changing the site's underlying architecture, you will need to set up the repository on your local machine. Check the Setup guides for further information.

For UX and content (Updating documentation)

If you are adding user research, usage guidance, or fixing typos, you do not need to install anything locally. You can edit the Markdown files directly in your browser using the GitHub interface.

Please refer to the documentation guides in this section to ensure you are using the correct headings and formats before making your changes.