How to Get Your School Data into the Right Hands

You can be really clever with your school data: finding trends and patterns that identify common themes, identifying groups of pupils that need the most support, honing in on topic areas to focus on within subsections... the list goes on. 

All this is important, and invaluable for your teaching – but it won’t help you if you haven’t got the buy-in from key stakeholders: students, colleagues, and parents. 

One of the reasons I left teaching to start Pupil Progress was that I could see the huge impact an effective tracking and monitoring system had on student outcomes (and teachers’ sanity) – as long as the data got in front of the right people, in the right way. 

Here’s how to get the right people on board to harness the full potential of your data.

1. Get data in front of your pupils

One of my biggest frustrations, when I was teaching, was that my students didn’t seem to get that their grades were theirs and not mine, the teacher.

But it made complete sense – why would they feel that it was their qualification and grade? Marks were recorded on my clipboard, copied into my spreadsheet, on my computer, then taken back to my office. 

Here’s where the magic happened: I started giving my pupils an individual report, one that broke down the course completely. The reports were printed with their names on and added to their folders with the full detail of their current position, presenting their personal grades. Suddenly I saw a huge shift in mindset and motivation – they started to feel responsible for their own progress.

Plus, what I started to see in the lesson was remarkable: students started challenging their marks. Now, you might read this and think: “This is exactly why I don’t share grades.” And initially, I thought that too, but when my pupils became obsessed with the mark scheme or grading criteria, they became much more focused on the knowledge or skills they needed to gain to move their grade forward.

Make it their data, their grades – and that will make all the difference.

2. Get data in front of your teachers

While getting data into students’ hands is vital, getting it into your teachers’ hands is equally as important. As a Head of Faculty, I was a big believer in making sure teachers delivering the course not only saw the overall picture but also had access to all the nitty-gritty details.

Take dedicated time to explain the course make up, how it all works, all the calculations, and why some parts of the course are calculated in certain ways. This boosts everyone’s confidence in the classroom, and their ability to plan strategically. For example, instead of following a lesson plan blindly because “that’s how we always do it”, your data might actually be showing that a particular topic area needs more attention to impact student outcomes. 

True, some courses have a higher weighting for theory than practical, but if a pupil’s strength is practical it might make sense to spend more time securing a higher grade for the practical for a better overall grade. 

When all teachers in a school are able to understand and interpret their data, they’re able to make smart, strategic decisions like this when it comes to lesson planning and delivery. 

Go on – open that dialogue, challenge the lesson delivery status quo, and allow teachers to challenge what’s best for the pupils in their class.

3. Get the data into the parents’ hands

I’ve been to more parents’ evenings than I can remember, and discussing the course breakdown was usually met with glazed eyes and vague nods. That’s why I shifted to presenting student data to parents in the form of individual reports. 

An individual report makes it easy for parents to digest all the important information relating to their child’s performance. It helps them understand the make-up of the course and how the mark from each component impacts the final grade. It also clearly and easily shows areas of weakness, and therefore areas to focus on to move forward.

It also meant parents trusted me (an organised teacher, with solid information about their child’s progress, neatly displayed in a single handout, must be good at their job, right?) That meant the focus of the conversation was never to question the course delivery, or how I was controlling the class, but instead focused on specific learning areas that needed attention. 

Parents left the evening feeling confident in their kids, in me, and in the school. And let me tell you, getting parents on the same page as your teachers and students is an absolute game-changer.

That’s why I can’t recommend enough the importance of sharing pupil’s data with everyone that plays a part in your student’s outcomes. 

 You can read a more detailed version of this article over on our website: Forget ‘meaningful data’: think about your teachers and students.

Individual reports are one of the many features we provide as part of the Pupil Progress Assessment Platform. Check out our no-obligation 6-week free trial to see if Pupil Progress is right for you, or send me a message.