School Data Updates

Tracking in the Early Years Foundation Stage is a mess. We’re not talking about statutory assessment here – of the Reception Baseline and the Foundation Stage Profile. This is about day-to-day data collection, especially across the reception year, for the purpose of monitoring pupil progress. I use the phrase ‘day-to-day’ deliberately because let’s admit it:…

Six years on from the government announcing its intention to get rid of levels, many schools are still struggling with the issue of how best to measure progress. An increasing number, however, are coming to realise an inconvenient truth: that maybe it just can’t be done and any attempt to do so is a waste…

Before I get started answering this question, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not keen on the word ‘tracking’ in the context of school data management. I think it’s slightly sinister and misleading. Tracking is what hunters do; and what the military does with missiles. I think we need a better name. How…

If there was ever a time to review the nature and purpose of primary school accountability measures, it is now. No data will be collected this year: no early years foundation stage profile, no phonics outcomes, no key stage 1 teacher assessments , no multiplication tables check scores, no key stage 2 results. There will…

Once, whilst out running in the Cotswold Hills, I was approached through the woods by a family with three terriers. Two of the dogs were out in front, jostling for position, neither particularly interested in me; and bringing up the rear several metres behind the family was a much older one, ambling along at his…

I’ve recently been posting a series of infographics of Ofsted inspection data on my timeline. This has prompted a lot of discussion so I thought it would be useful to publish them all in one place here. First, here’s a breakdown of the various categories of inspection that have taken place under the new EIF…

There is a concept in urban design known as shared space. It involves the removal of much of the street furniture – signage, painted lines, bollards, traffic lights and barriers – to improve safety. The boundaries between the different zones of use – for pedestrians, bikes, and cars – are blurred, and road users become…

Reports of data’s death have been greatly exaggerated. It’s over a year since Ofsted announced their intention to no longer take the schools’ internal tracking data into consideration during inspections. I wrote this post at the time, outlining my thoughts, and on balance I still think it’s a good idea: it should cause schools to…

There was a time when I believed that a 101 page RAISE report was an essential and accurate summary of a school’s performance; that floor standards were vital; that children really did make a point of progress each term; that there really was such a thing as a 3b+; that the performance tables told us…

Many schools are using standardised tests from the likes of NFER, GL and Rising Stars to monitor attainment and progress of pupils, and to predict outcomes; and yet there is lot of confusion about how standardised scores relate to scaled scores. The common misconception is that 100 on a standardised test (eg from NFER) is…