Lean, consistent and automated — trends in MAT use of school data
Across all industries, leaders use performance indicators across a vast range of data sources to identify areas of the business that are on track or are a cause for concern. These are fine-tuned over time, and insights are used to signal early indicators of success or failure. In education however, aside from a few headline performance measures, we have not historically been particularly sophisticated consumers of data.
Yet in bringing together over 15 MATs — both large and small — for a round table discussion on data, there was clear consensus that a strong understanding of data is core to a successful MAT. Data needs to be “nailed to the floor” and acted upon quickly, as one attendee put it. It should be used as you go along, in order to turn the steering wheel. We should be continually asking the question, “Is the provision in each of our schools right?” Going further, we should be able to drill down to the student level data and ask whether or not we have the right provision for each individual student.
Excitingly, technology is enabling school and MAT leaders to collect, interrogate, and understand their data in new ways, and more quickly. To use technology effectively to become better users of data, there are three key things to bear in mind.
First, you need a single source of the truth — collect the data once (not too frequently) and make sure you can move it around. Then, as was strongly advocated during the forum, aim to “automate everything” and avoid buying any software that cannot integrate with the rest of your data system via an API. This will support the validity of your data while also limit the workload associated with data collection and manipulation.
Next, be sure that you can trust your data. This requires us to challenge the quality of every data point, understanding how it is collected, processed, aggregated, and analysed. Take assessment (always a hot topic at MAT events, and it was no different here) as an example. If each school in a MAT collects termly grades (please no more than three times per year), you should be sure that you are testing the same thing, that the conditions under which the test was taken are the same, and that the approach to marking and moderation is consistent. Otherwise, you cannot be sure that you are comparing like with like across schools.
Finally, banish complex spreadsheets, Visual Basic scripts, and hours of pivot table analysis to the past. The market for apps and tools that can integrate data and provide workflows is increasingly sophisticated. Data from standardised test providers can be collated and compared (e.g. Assembly), as can survey outcomes across schools (E.g. Edurio). Most complex school administrative processes (like those to support your school behaviour or attendance policies) can be resolved with nifty workflow creation (using tools such as those in Bromcom MIS). Importantly, the data from each of these places can be aggregated, shared, and compared through APIs, data warehouses and the smart interfaces of BI tools and platforms.
As we collect more and more data across systems, increasingly we have a “big data problem” across our schools. For now, well-designed processes and performance indicators allow us to gain insights from the huge volumes of data that we collect, and we can use the data to answer most of our questions. But we started to ask about what comes next — how should we be looking to machine learning and AI to help us even further, and to perhaps set the questions as well as share the answers? Perhaps this should be on the agenda for one of our next forums…..
This blog is based on the discussions that took place during the inaugural MAT Data & Analytics Forum established by Ark Schools and Harris Federation, supported by Bromcom Computers and Microsoft.
