Data rich information poor

On Thursday I attended the ASCL Leadership of Data One Day Conference.  This training event represented a significant investment by my school in my professional development and I feel confident it was good value. I came away armed with a sound policy update, refined knowledge brought on by stimulating professional debate and a range of strategies to introduce data discussion for school improvement from a range of fantastic, hugely experienced practitioners / educators. I would definitely recommend this nerdy cocktail of RaiseOnline, Ofsted, DFE and FFT to any aspiring dataheads and #sltdata nerds.

Data – the wider picture – Duncan Baldwin

The headline issues – the statement of intent presented few changes to Raise Online. Duncan shared this title and information with the expectation all knew what ‘The Statement of Intent’ was. So for my benefit and anyone else new to the role, ‘The Statement of Intent’ gives details of the content of the 2012 Performance Tables and any changes to the Tables from last year and can be found here. It is a well presented document but here are my notes from the session.

• KS4 – attainment and progress on EAL and gender
• Mobility indicators – %5A*-C and En/Ma Progress. A measure for progress and attainment of students who have been in school throughout years 10 and 11, alternatively, a comparative measure for students who join your school at a given midpoint in KS4.
• Best 8 – no change in max equiv in best 8 measures for 2012 and 2013;  (max 2 in 2014?)
• The effect of comparable outcomes
• Grade is everything not the methodology
• Discounting rules for families of subjects (combinations of subjects)

KS4 Impact of Wolf

• Shadow Wolf tables – performance tables under the Wolf rules. The perishing of the volume indicator.
• 4=1 Volume indicator
• 0.5 = 0 Short courses no longer counting
• 2015 New list of qualification to be published in November

New measures

• For post 16 a measure of “facilitating subjects” essentially 16-18 ebacc measure.
• VA by qualification type
• Achievement of levels 2 En/Ma for those who were unsuccessful at 16 (experimental)

Learner Achievement Tracker – Level 3 Value Added – publish 1^st Nov (unvalidated and validated in Feb)

I was not familiar with the LAT but with a little research, it is a piece of software specifically designed to allow users to access and make use of the outputs from the calculation of VA for 16-18 learners. It is now the responsibility of the DfE. The data from the calculations are produced as a variety of reports that show a school or college’s performance against national average performance. Published (unchecked) on Provider Gateway on 1 Nov, checked in mid Feb.

Raiseonline Changes

• Confidence interval methodology has changed, making it easier and more significant, basically showing you how close you were to being significant. Now using national variances rather than school.
• Early enter analysis for mathematics
• Stability improvements, in as much that we were informed that VA measures are more stable than CVA?

RAISE Online NtG (narrowing the gap)

• Free school meals EVER –  as a result previous FSM data has changed. Interesting our staff were finding it a little difficult to get this information for this Y7. A task for intake and transition for here on in.
• Mobile and Non-mobile – present through the whole of KS4

We were also given a quick explanation of how KS2 English had been assessed; writing has been teacher assessed and a level 6 test (approx. half more in Maths / few in Eng) and reading tested.

Data Checking Exercises – October and June
Learner Destination Measures
Attendance – no longer distinguishing between authorised and unauthorised. After all, all non-attendance impacts on performance.

It is clear from this session alone, that for ‘new-to-data’ school leaders, this kind of policy precis  is invaluable and already ear marked for next year.

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