A visual approach to pupil data

The trouble with data is that there is just too much of it and sometimes you cannot see the wood for the trees. Successive governments have encouraged us to gather information about every conceivable aspect of school life and to develop increasingly narrow and specific pigeonholes for children. As a result we are all overloaded with figures but cannot necessarily interrogate them to spot trends or make sense of the numbers, grades and bands.

So I was pleased to meet Jane Girle head teacher at Penn Wood Primary and nursery School in Slough and talk about how a Management Information System can make a difference to what happens in the classroom. They are using SIMS Discover from Capita, free to all SIMS Users, and can pull together all their data on one screen in the form of graphs or Venn diagrams and interrogate it in better ways.

It will not just show if a pupil has poor attendance but will assign them to a  group. If that individual’s punctuality or attendance  improves, the system will remove them from the group and more importantly will send an alert so that school can recognise and reward the improvement.

“We  were a SIMS Discover pilot school,” said Jane Girle, “and have been involved in trialling the product.  While there have been a few technical hitches that have been overcome, it is an excellent product that we are doing exciting things with every day.  We can look at children coming from different schools or from overseas and track their progress alongside children that have been with us for their whole education to children at school..

“We have found it helpful to see results in the form of interactive graphs.  It will, for example, reinforce our focus on children’s attainment in English and maths in Venn Diagram format.”

The school is always keen to improve attainment, achievement and attendance but, like many schools, found that information was available to senior managers but did not get through to the classroom.  “Now staff can access information anywhere – in school, at home on an iPad.” said Jane. “One of the key differences is that is easy  to see the positives as well as the negatives and we can pass on the good news to our parents.”

If you want to make up your own mind about Capita’s SIMS Discover, go to one of the training events.

See also //youtu.be/FZhS3-P4kLY.