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Arbor MIS | School Improvement | School Operations | Schools
Category : Blog
In May, the DfE published the findings from the much anticipated Timpson Review, which recommends that schools be supported to reduce the number of exclusions they make by focussing in on early intervention and quality Alternative Provision. In this blog, I will explore the implications of this on schools and discuss how Arbor MIS can
In May, the DfE published the findings from the much anticipated Timpson Review, which recommends that schools be supported to reduce the number of exclusions they make by focussing in on early intervention and quality Alternative Provision. In this blog, I will explore the implications of this on schools and discuss how Arbor MIS can help schools to use data to intervene proactively with students and better understand their holistic needs, before they reach the point of being an exclusion risk.
Are current intervention strategies timely enough?
Prior to working with Arbor, my 13 years as a teacher and senior leader were spent both in Mainstream Secondary and in Specialist Education for Behaviourally Challenging students, so I have seen both the before and after stories of mainstream exclusions.
When a child comes into a full time AP or SEMH school, it’s often the case that they have been excluded, not just once but many times, and are trapped in an ongoing, negative spiral of:
Image 1: A diagram showing a child’s negative behaviour cycle
Trying to re-instill a sense of self-worth and value for learning into individuals who seem almost broken by this experience is very difficult at the post-exclusion stage. We succeeded with many, but not with all.
For those with whom we didn’t, I often wonder… Could it have been a different story if during their more formative stages in education, greater focus had been placed on developing their necessary dispositions for learning, rather than hammering home a nearly entirely academic curriculum? For students who are more resilient and better at regulating their emotions , this is ok; but for those who aren’t, early subjection to repeat experiences of failure will trigger innate safety behaviours such as escape and avoidance, which in the classroom context will display as refusal to work and disruption to lessons.
This opens up a broader debate about the appropriateness of the curriculum we deliver and whether we are assessing the right things for these individuals – something I discussed in my previous blog which focussed on SEN Assessment. Whilst there will never be a silver bullet answer to the “what to do?” question for all children (this will differ depending on context), my overriding feeling regarding “when to do it?” is that, in nearly all cases, it could have been earlier in the story and not at the point where behaviour had already become unmanageable. But how do we know when is best to take a different approach? That’s where the effective use of data comes in!
Data driven intervention
During my time in schools, I have seen and implemented a fair share of behavioural initiatives and policies, some of which were successful and others less so, but in every instance their success was dependent on the quality of information that fed into them. Data-wise, the two most important questions to ask are:
Unfortunately, the answer to these questions isn’t always “yes”. In many schools, it’s hard to act on data in a timely way, as there’s usually a heavy reliance on the manual collation and analysis of it in order to find meaning. Therefore, intervention is often carried out at the point where behaviour is so severe or prevalent that you don’t even need data to tell you there’s something to do. So, you become a reactive culture.
Negative behaviour doesn’t occur in isolation; it’s often linked to other factors, such as home-life, literacy, attendance and pastoral issues. But due to the siloed nature of data in schools (as illustrated in the systems diagram below) it is also difficult to combine different measures into simple, quick analysis, or to easily know what’s been going on with a child.
Image 2: A diagram showing the siloed nature of data in schools
Arbor MIS makes it easy to input and analyse all your core data in one system. With all student data brought together on simple profile pages, it’s easy for staff to get the holistic overview of a student that’s needed in order to plan more specifically for their needs. This is something that’s crucial to Liam Dowling, and the staff of Hinderton School, an Outstanding Cheshire SEN school who specialise in supporting students with Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC) and social communication difficulties from a young age.
Image 3: A diagram showing the way school data can be brought together
Hinderton’s short inspection letter from June 2017 praised the school on the interconnectedness of it’s systems, meaning that all stakeholders have easy access to the data they need:
“Your online systems, which work seamlessly together, make sure that senior leaders, staff and parents all have the information they need at their fingertips. As a result, you have streamlined and improved all aspects of information relating to pupils.”
Hinderton’s short inspection letter – OFSTED June 2017
Hinderton are one of nearly 800 schools who benefit from Arbor MIS’ ability to:
Give staff easy access to the full story of a child to enable better understanding of needs
Image 4: A demonstration of how Arbor MIS gives you the full story of a child
With appropriate permissions, all information ranging from communications with parents, attendance, behaviour and SEN history is visible in one place. Understanding what has gone on with a disaffected child is crucial to knowing how best to work with them and Arbor makes finding this information as easy as possible.
Automate behaviour action and analysis
Image 5: A demonstration of how you can automate behaviour action in Arbor MIS
Arbor’s automatic workflows within the behaviour module ensure that students who exhibit persistent low level behaviour across multiple lessons are always identified and action is taken without an administrative burden to staff. This helps schools to ensure that negative behaviour is appropriately challenged in all instances and isn’t allowed to snowball to the point of being unmanageable.
Link Interventions to Data
Image 6: A demonstration of how you can plan interventions with Arbor MIS
Arbor allows you to create interventions with Participant and Outcome criteria that pull data in from anywhere in the MIS. Therefore, students could be recommended for a Behaviour for Learning intervention following a slight change in behavioural patterns at an earlier point in time than when it becomes prevalent and significantly disruptive to others.
Customise Assessment frameworks to target specific needs
Image 7: An example of how to customise assessment frameworks in Arbor MIS
The Springwell Special Academy are an Outstanding SEMH school who make full use of Arbor’s flexible Assessment system to host specific frameworks that fit their students’ needs. This enables them to focus on social and emotional development, resilience and student wellbeing as well as tracking academic progress. The image above shows the input page of a framework they have developed called the SEMH tracker.
In conclusion, the Timpson review has brought about a greater emphasis on schools to develop strategies to help students whom they may otherwise exclude. The four tools above are just a few examples of how Arbor could help schools in collecting more specifically focussed data to use in a more timely and targeted way in order to help improve the holistic outcomes of these vulnerable students. We recognise that the challenge isn’t easy and the “what to do” expertise lies with the people who know the students best – a piece of software isn’t going to be the solution but could play a significant part in the data strategy that drives the change!
If you’d like to find out more about how our simple, smart cloud-based MIS could help you transform the way your school uses interventions, contact us. You can also book a demo by calling 0207 043 0470 or email tellmemore@arbor-education.com.
Arbor MIS | School Improvement | School Operations | Schools | Teacher Workload
Being born in the early 90’s and receiving my first computer as a gift in December of 1999 turned out to be not only a brilliant idea (thanks mum & dad!), but for many reasons, also quite profound in the way that this beige PC tower ended up shaping not just my life, but also
Being born in the early 90’s and receiving my first computer as a gift in December of 1999 turned out to be not only a brilliant idea (thanks mum & dad!), but for many reasons, also quite profound in the way that this beige PC tower ended up shaping not just my life, but also the lives of an entire generation.
It’s almost impossible to imagine today’s world without the advent of the technology that has shaped our lives so dramatically. Even as a young boy, while I would spend countless hours playing around with this marvellous box of tricks (Windows 98 seems so archaic by today’s standards), I was amazed by what it could do and saw no limit to what was possible.
Suddenly, I could (willingly) do my homework on-screen and at the press of a button it would be spat out by the enormous printer to the left of the big-back monitor. I’m sure you can imagine my utter delight when I figured out how to access the internet through dial-up (and my hopeless despair when I’d spent 10 minutes trying to download an image, only for the phone to ring half way through and kill my connection).
Picture 1: A comparison of a computer from 1984 and a computer from 2019
Fast forward 20 years and I still find myself astounded with all the technological advancements of the modern world. My smartphone can do everything and more that my first computer could and all the time we’re finding new and clever ways to apply all of this technology to a variety of different situations, problems and sectors to make our lives easier.
However, this isn’t always the case. When I think about how we use technology to supplement educational outcomes and improve the effectiveness of our schools in general, I have mixed feelings. In some cases schools are embracing tech with great results (putting iPads in the classroom being an example) but in other areas, schools are being left behind.
The (not so) looming crisis
In 2019, schools are under scrutiny and pressure like never before. The education system is ever evolving and adapting to address its own challenges whilst trying to find new ways to teach the next generation so they’re set up for life in an ever more competitive and challenging world. Despite this, it’s failing to adequately address an ever progressing crisis: teachers leaving the profession at an unprecedented rate.
Among others, one of the most commonly cited reasons for the staffing crisis in the UK is the increasing demand and workload placed upon school staff as a whole, not just teachers. When I meet with school leaders in the North of England this is a question which is raised almost every single time – ‘how can I improve the efficiency and outcomes of my school whilst also reducing my staff’s workload?’ and my answer is always the same: try to see technology as an assistant and a driver for positive change and not a means to an end. It should help, not hinder you.
In most elements of our lives we embrace the latest and greatest in tech and no longer do we settle for the sub-standard; take mobile phones as an example. On average, most people change their smartphone every 2-3 years and sometimes even more frequently. If the device doesn’t do what we want or expect it to, or even if we just find it a bit difficult to use, what do we do? We replace it without hesitation and try another brand entirely.
I really like this attitude to tech; it serves to ensure that vendors are always striving to find new and innovative ways to make our lives easier, always one step ahead of us and improving on things that we never even thought were a problem, until we’re handed the solution. Of course, we know what happens when they don’t move with the times. More so, it stops vendors becoming complacent.
Having seen the internals of education and technology for myself, I firmly believe schools should think of their systems like most of us do a mobile phone; a really useful tool to help us out on a day to day basis, but something we can easily swap and move away from if it no longer serves its purpose. It’s for this reason that we encourage schools we meet with to do a systems audit, which helps determine if the technology they’re paying for has become outdated or no longer fits with the day-to-day running of the school.
Picture 2: An example of mobile phones from the 1980s and a mobile phone in 2019
In a school, the MIS is one of the key pieces of tech which has the capacity to vastly reduce staff workload, increase the efficiency of the school and improve pupil outcomes at large. Despite this, many schools across the country are still using clunky, out-of-date systems that are time consuming and difficult to use, yet some appear to accept this because they’re perhaps unaware just how much of a difference a modern MIS could make to their work, and their school as a whole.
If I could give one piece of advice to anyone who’s not happy with the technology that’s supposed to assist them and make their life easier, it would be to explore alternatives and try and find a system that fits the ethos of your school, and that enhances the livelihoods of its staff and the outcomes of its pupils.
Sometimes, we’re unaware that there are better ways to do things until we’re presented with a new idea. Try to look for a solution to your problems in a proactive manner – technology is there to help you and when it no longer does, it effectively becomes surplus to requirements.
If you’re unhappy with your MIS and school systems in general, it could be that they’re no longer fit for purpose and you should start exploring alternatives. It’s your duty to ensure your school has the best outcomes and your staff are as happy as they can be.
Remember, a change of attitude is all that’s necessary.
Arbor Insight | School Improvement | School Operations | Schools
As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, the new Ofsted Inspection Framework will come into effect in September 2019. Central to the new framework is the idea that there isn’t a “correct” way for schools to do things – whereas the old framework encouraged inspectors to look at your school’s results and use data for accountability
As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, the new Ofsted Inspection Framework will come into effect in September 2019. Central to the new framework is the idea that there isn’t a “correct” way for schools to do things – whereas the old framework encouraged inspectors to look at your school’s results and use data for accountability purposes, the new one focuses on the context of your school and the ways in which this has shaped your curriculum and the “quality of education” available (you can see a summary of the other changes in our blog here).
After reviewing the new framework with our partner LKMCo, we decided that we wanted to help schools make the most of this less prescriptive approach from Ofsted. So we’re excited to announce that we’ve upgraded and enhanced our old Ofsted Readiness Report, converting it into a report which is focused on helping schools to plan around and respond to their specific context, rather than on whether things are being done in a particular way. The old name didn’t make much sense any more, so we’ve renamed it the Understanding Your School Report.
The Understanding Your School Report will combine your latest DfE performance data (ASP) with ONS area classifications, families of schools, and top quintile benchmarks to give you the most complete picture of your outcomes in the context of your school’s unique demographic intake. Our aim is to bring a range of data sources together to give you a balanced and nuanced picture of your school to help inform your school improvement approach. We’ve summarised some of the new report’s features below.
What can I do with the new Understanding Your School Report?
The main data source in the report will still be Analyse School Performance (ASP). Whilst ASP is helpful for getting a basic overview of your performance, it’s often hard to use, so we wanted our new report to be a useful companion to the DfE’s service as well as a helpful tool in its own right:
1. Understand your school’s performance & outcomes in the context of its demographics
Exam results can be disproportionately affected by social and geographical context, but it’s time-consuming to bring these data sets together. Services like ASP don’t show any contextual data alongside your performance out-of-the-box.
To help you see how the area your school is in has impacted outcomes, the Understanding Your School Report will feature our new Area Type Comparison graph, which uniquely brings ONS area classification data together with your ASP attainment data for the first time. The ONS has classified every LA in the country into 8 “supergroups” which share characteristics, based on socio-economic and demographic data from the national census. Our graph explains which supergroup (or area type) your school is in, and shows how your performance compares to schools in areas with similar socio-economic characteristics, helping you to examine patterns between your student intake and attainment.
Image 1: A screenshot of the Area Type Comparison graph from Arbor’s Understanding Your School Report
2. Get meaningful benchmarks beyond just comparing to the national average
ASP only benchmarks your school against the national average. Whilst this is helpful, the national average isn’t always the most meaningful benchmark (for example, as a small rural primary school you might feel it’s not relevant to compare yourself to large primary schools based in a city because their intake will be so different). The Understanding Your School Report will still show how you’ve performed compared to the national average, but it also introduces 2 new benchmarks as well.
Our new schools “Like You” benchmark uses EEF “Families of Schools” methodology to compare your performance to similar schools based on four factors:
This benchmark should help you to compare your performance with other schools with similar pupil characteristics, in similar contexts.
The Understanding Your School also gives you a “Top Quintile” benchmark, which compares you to the top 20% of schools for each measure – this provides your school with a useful stretch target to work towards.
Image 2: A screenshot showing the different benchmarks available in The Understanding Your School Report
3. Understand how consistent your performance has been over time
It can be hard to visualise progress over time using the tables and bar charts provided in ASP. Our new Understanding Your School Report will help you see how your performance has changed over time by presenting Trend over Time line graphs, and showing 3 year rolling averages next to key headline figures. This gives you a broader picture of your performance, meaning you can quickly spot any inconsistencies and identify anomalies (for example, is this cohort’s performance consistent with your school, or is it atypical? If so, why?).
Image 3: A screenshot of the Trend over Time line graph in The Understanding Your School Report
4. Easily visualise gaps and work out where to target interventions
Whilst ASP breaks down your performance by pupil characteristics, it does this in tables – which means it can be time consuming to spot gaps, making it very hard to tell at a glance how well different groups are performing.
The Understanding Your School Report has a dedicated Closing the Gap section which helps you to benchmark different school groups such as SEN or Pupil Premium against each other. We express gaps as numbers of pupils rather than % to help make your SIP more meaningful.
Meanwhile, the new Curriculum Summary section for secondary schools helps leaders see how different student groups have chosen to take exams, so that they can identify whether there are issues with access to different areas of learning between groups of pupils.
5. View meaningful analysis of your data presented in easy-to-understand charts
With its clear, visual designs, simple bar charts and callouts in plain English, the Understanding Your School Report does all your performance analysis for you. Instantly see headline measures on the Key Findings page, as well as key areas to work on. This means you can get on with using your data to drive school improvement instead of wading through tables in ASP.
Image 4: A screenshot of the Key Findings page in The Understanding Your School Report
We hope that the Understanding Your School Report becomes an essential part of your school improvement cycle. If you’re interested in hearing more about the report, as well as about what our other Insight reports can do for you, why not come along to one of our free Insight Training Sessions this Autumn?
The Understanding Your School Report will be available in Autumn 2019. Sign up to Arbor Insight here to be the first to hear when it comes out. For more information about Arbor Insight, email insight@arbor-education.com or call 02070431830.
At Arbor, we don’t just provide free ASP and finance data benchmarking tools for every school in the country; we also want to make sure that each one is analysing their data effectively, and knows how best to use that analysis to drive their school improvement plan. That’s why, for the last 3 years, we’ve
At Arbor, we don’t just provide free ASP and finance data benchmarking tools for every school in the country; we also want to make sure that each one is analysing their data effectively, and knows how best to use that analysis to drive their school improvement plan. That’s why, for the last 3 years, we’ve been running free Insight Training sessions throughout the UK, with new and improved content each year!
Each session lasts between 90 – 120 minutes, and will cover:
1. Benchmarking Reports & Dashboards:
We’ll demonstrate how to use Arbor’s reports and dashboards to quickly identify strengths & weaknesses and make effective interventions to improve outcomes in your school. Digging deeper into the trends behind your benchmarking data, we’ll investigate whether this year’s results are typical for your school, or specific to one cohort.
Plus, you’ll get the first training on our new ‘Understanding your School’ report, released this Autumn! This Report combines your latest DfE performance data with ONS area classifications, families of schools, and top quintile benchmarks to give you the most complete picture of your outcomes in the context of your school’s unique demographic intake.
2. School Improvement Workshop:
See how your performance data can feed into planning & writing specific, measurable objectives for your School Improvement Plan. You will work through practical scenarios with colleagues and take home solutions, tools and top tips, to apply in your own school.
3. Arbor Management Information System:
If you would like to stay for an extra 15 minutes at the end, you can watch a demo of Arbor’s smart, simple, cloud-based MIS.
This year, we’re teaming up with some of our valued partners to deliver content that’s tailored to the schools in specific areas of the country. Just click the link below to book your free place!
Click here to sign up for a free training session near you: https://arbor-insight-training-2019.eventbrite.com
Everyone is welcome at these sessions, and if you’re not yet using your Insight portal – don’t worry! It only takes a minute to sign up for free, but you can attend these sessions without having used your Insight portal before.
Can’t see a session near you? Just get in touch to let us know you want the Insight Training Roadshow to come to you! Give us a call on 0207 043 1830, or drop us an email at insight@arbor-education.com.
Arbor MIS | School Improvement | Schools
Thousands of schools have now joined the cashless and paperless revolution, from the cosiest rural primary to the biggest inner-city sixth form college. This has led to an explosion in the Edtech sector, with hundreds of useful apps and dashboards now available to manage your school or MAT more efficiently. This is great news for
Thousands of schools have now joined the cashless and paperless revolution, from the cosiest rural primary to the biggest inner-city sixth form college. This has led to an explosion in the Edtech sector, with hundreds of useful apps and dashboards now available to manage your school or MAT more efficiently. This is great news for schools, but the choice can be bewildering.
To combat the flow of paper slips, cash and cheques that once flooded the office, many schools have now armed themselves with an array of new technologies. This can lead to soaring IT budgets and “login fatigue” (a feeling of exhaustion caused by typing in multiple usernames and passwords to complete one simple task!).
That’s why we thought we’d help you narrow down the field, by compiling our top 10 cloud systems to help schools work more efficiently. These systems are all best-of-breed in their own right, and what’s more, they integrate smoothly with Arbor’s smart, simple, cloud based MIS!
| CPOMS
Banishing paper logbooks and filing cabinets from schools all over the country, CPOMS is an intuitive app for monitoring child protection, safeguarding and pastoral issues. It cuts down paperwork for staff, while ensuring incidents are properly reported, details are shared securely and students are kept safe.
Basic student and staff data already syncs from Arbor to CPOMS, allowing our customers to operate seamlessly between the two systems. We’re now working together on a deeper integration, which we hope will allow teachers to get a single clear picture of their student’s pastoral and education data.
| G Suite for Education
Google offers its much-loved set of apps (including Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Hangouts) to schools for free, including extra features to make for smooth collaboration between students and staff. You can link Arbor MIS to Google so that you only have to set up accounts for your staff and students once, and your timetables in Arbor will automatically show in your Google Calendar, keeping your MIS as the single source of truth.
| InVentry
InVentry’s popular Sign In tools help schools securely monitor staff, students and visitors, while speeding up the sign in process. They also provide a user-friendly Audit & Compliance app, to simplify the management of assets. InVentry has set up read/write integrations with Arbor and other leading MIS providers, so you can relax knowing your crucial attendance and security data is accurate to the minute.
| SISRA and 4Matrix |
Although SISRA have recently branched out into lesson observations and CPD with their new product, SISRA Observe, they’re probably best known for their outstanding secondary data analysis tool, SISRA Analytics. Highlights include bespoke grading so you can use your own scales and language, and out-of-the-box performance reports to save you time on exam results day.
Similarly, 4Matrix is well loved by secondary schools for its management of school performance data. The app produces quick, in-depth reports on exam results day, meaning you won’t need to sift through spreadsheets to show progress for different student groups. 4Matrix also supports the design and assessment of a curriculum “without levels” for KS3.
Both systems help you create neat, visual representations of your key performance data. You can easily sync achievement and contextual data from Arbor marksheets to either 4Matrix or SISRA, meaning there’s no need for dual entry, and your MIS remains the single source of truth.
| RS Assessments
RS Assessment’s standardised tests PIRA and PUMA are a key component of many primary school improvement strategies, helping Senior Leaders track in-year pupil progress and benchmark against age-related expectations. What’s more, you can use the tests in conjunction with MARK (My Assessment and Reporting Kit) online, to get time-saving analysis of test results.
Arbor has partnered with RS Assessments to feed test results from PIRA and PUMA into our smart, simple MIS, so there’s no need for dual data entry. For MAT Leaders, the same data will aggregate up to your MAT MIS to give you a single overview of your schools. Read more about this integration here!
| ParentPay
ParentPay is an easy-to-use online payments service used by over 9,000 schools in the UK. It allows cashless income collection and financial reporting for everything from clubs and trips, to dinners and uniforms. ParentPay comes with in-built email and SMS functionality too, so you can manage payments and communicate with parents in the same place. Arbor MIS includes a built-in payment and communications service, but we also integrate directly with ParentPay, giving schools the flexibility to choose the best solution for them.
| Assembly
Assembly offers school data integration and Multi Academy Trust analytics. You can use their innovative dashboards to connect your MIS to a wide range of third-party applications, and also to populate Assembly Analytics (Assembly’s MAT Analytics tool) with a live feed of you school’s data. Arbor is one of six leading MIS providers to integrate with Assembly, so it’s a great option for MATs who aren’t ready to move all their schools onto the same MIS.
For MATs looking to find economies of scale by centralising MIS across their schools, Arbor’s MIS for Groups and MATs allows you to transform the way you work, by reporting and taking action centrally.
| Wonde and Groupcall |
Wonde and Groupcall are two of the UK’s most popular “data providers” for Education, which means they can connect your MIS with hundreds more apps and make it easy to control data sharing. You can share data from your MIS with 3rd party apps through their platform, with user friendly dashboards to help you see what data is shared with whom. Arbor MIS (along with many other cloud based providers) integrates with both Wonde and Groupcall, meaning any of the apps on their platforms are open to Arbor schools.
So there you have it: our pick of the top 10 apps for schools and MATs looking to go cashless and paperless. Powerful on their own, they all integrate with Arbor’s cloud-based MIS to help you save even more time and get deeper insight into your data. We’re not stopping there though – our API team is constantly expanding the range of integrations available to our customers. We’re currently working on a deeper sync with the market-leading Cunninghams Catering app, so watch this space!
School Improvement | School Operations | Schools
I used to marvel at the mystery and complexity that always seemed to surround the world of the Curriculum Deputy. When I eventually became one, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the enormous privilege but enormous responsibility I had to create the perfect curriculum model – taking into account the latest thinking on curriculum design and
I used to marvel at the mystery and complexity that always seemed to surround the world of the Curriculum Deputy. When I eventually became one, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the enormous privilege but enormous responsibility I had to create the perfect curriculum model – taking into account the latest thinking on curriculum design and implementation. As I became more experienced, I began to make increasingly bold moves to build the curriculum around the needs of learners and not just the constraints of the budget.
My first mentor was a retired (and fabulously wise) Curriculum Deputy who stressed that planning the curriculum was a whole-year job. When I became a Headteacher, I continued working and planning in this way and valued the support of some really creative thinkers on my leadership teams. It was a special day indeed when Ofsted visited one such school and judged leadership, management and the curriculum as outstanding.Sadly, that framework and financial climate are a thing of the past now!
In more recent times, the Leadership Team started to consider in depth the outcomes for pupils after each set of summer results and would use this to interrogate the merits of our curriculum plan. Once or twice we did withdraw a course in September if student numbers didn’t justify it, or a staffing crisis necessitated it, but generally, once a commitment had been made to students that a course would run, we honoured it for the full two years.
Whatever our staff/student profile looked like, our first priority was to ensure that students had access to a broad, balanced, relevant curriculum. Our most recent challenges included:
Working to a timetable of 30 periods a week meant an inevitable squeeze on option choices, reducing the number of subjects students could choose from four to three in one case, and removing PSHCE/RE as subjects and mapping the provision across the curriculum. None of these decisions were easy to make or sat particularly well with me, but as the saying goes; something’s got to give.
My mentor, Bob, helped me plan my staffing requirements and showed me how many staff periods I needed to cover my commitments. Not only did this give me the opportunity to examine my current staffing needs, I could also begin to plan ahead – particularly if it meant recruiting a double specialist like a French/Spanish teacher or an RM/Textiles teacher. This was hugely helpful in feeding into the budget planning cycle and supporting my requests for additional funding for staffing.
We rarely carried any slack in our curriculum model. This inevitably meant that SLT members would also have to pick up subjects outside of their discipline and teachers that didn’t have a full timetable of classes were used as additional support with key groups and interventions. In reality, our staffing model would have to change incrementally throughout the year if the staffing profile suddenly changed, or if it was clear from our in-year tracking that students were not making sufficient progress.
One strength of our curriculum was that we could plan our interventions so well that we could provide extra lessons and tailor the curriculum for individuals and groups. We would do this by taking them out of some lessons where they were performing well to give them additional support in subjects where they were performing less well. We were blessed with a dedicated team of teachers and TA’s, some of whom would run sessions before and after school, others during registration and others during gained time or non-contact time.
If, like we did, you believe the curriculum is the dominant driver for boosting student outcomes and life chances, you will face constant budgetary pressures with very few variables to play with. We explored:
As a direct consequence, we found ourselves increasingly offering shorter contracts, reducing the size of the SLT and going without certain associate staff roles like a PA – just to balance the books. After all, it’s about delivering the most effective curriculum possible with your current staff and budget!
We used an approach we called “active vacancy management” that ensured that each time a post became vacant we didn’t simply fill it. First of all, we decided if we needed to replace the post, assessed whether it would be a like-for-like replacement or in some reduced capacity and analysed current staff deployments in detail, before considering placing an advert.
Increasingly, we looked beyond our own staff and worked closely with neighbouring schools to share teachers and other support roles. This is not without its complications, but it makes the process of appointing one full-time English teacher that works on two sites marginally easier than appointing two.
I am heartened by news of courageous schools and Trusts that break the mould and shape their curricula around the needs of their students by considering the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to be happy, resilient and independent learners.
Maintaining the intent and moral purpose of the curriculum is challenging, but the rewards for young people make it worth every minute.
“When we’re talking about intent, we’re talking about how ambitious, coherently planned and sequenced, how broad and balanced and inclusive the curriculum is.”
Heather Fearn – Ofsted
School Improvement | School Operations | Schools | Teacher Workload
Data entry is a daunting prospect for most teachers. With the amount of data they are expected to record, it can often take up a large portion of their daily workload, and workload is listed as one of the most common reasons for leaving the profession. The good news is it doesn’t have to be
Data entry is a daunting prospect for most teachers. With the amount of data they are expected to record, it can often take up a large portion of their daily workload, and workload is listed as one of the most common reasons for leaving the profession. The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way – keep reading to see how you can transform the way your school deals with data entry.
Making data work
In November 2018, the Teacher Workload Advisory Group released a report called “Making Data Work”. The report reveals that teachers consider unnecessary tasks around recording, monitoring and analysing data to be notably time-consuming, with data entry highlighted as the biggest problem. The Teacher Workload Advisory Group set out a number of suggestions for the DfE to consider. These included:
So what’s the best way to reduce data entry at your school? Try following these simple steps:
Part 1: Streamline your systems
Before you do anything else, you need to ask yourself if all the third-party systems you’re currently using still work for your school. Are they up to date? Do you need all of them? Do staff engage with them regularly?
Find out by running a systems audit. It’s easy to do – just follow the instructions in our blog on how to audit your school or MAT’s IT systems. By running a systems audit, you can reduce the number of places you have to enter data. Goodbye, multiple logins! Your staff will have fewer systems and apps to keep track of, which will considerably reduce their administrative workload.
Image 1: How we encourage schools to approach an IT systems audit
Part 2: Make sure any extra systems you’re using are integrated with your MIS
Over the years, your school has probably invested in lots of different systems that were useful at the time, but which don’t integrate with your current MIS. This can make everyday tasks like following up with detentions and creating meal plans much more complicated and time-consuming than they need to be, as you have to visit external apps in order to properly record all of the data. Using systems that integrate with your MIS can make admin a lot simpler. For example, Arbor’s integrations with apps like CPOMS and Inventry means that you only have to enter student data once and it will update automatically in these apps.
The “Making Data Work” report also advises that schools should “minimise or eliminate the number of pieces of information teachers are expected to compile.” Ensuring your systems integrate with your MIS will mean that you can access all your data in one place, which means you won’t have to spend time transferring it from one system to another.
Image 2: How parents can view all payments and invoices from Arbor’s Parent Portal
Part 3: Set up a system to suit your school
It’s important to think about how your MIS can best serve your school. For example, the report advises that schools should have simple systems that allow behaviour incidents to be logged during lesson time, rather than at break or lunch. In Arbor, you can set up incident workflows that track negative and positive behaviour (e.g. a Level 2 incident could automatically create a lunchtime detention). Automating workflows in this way means that teachers don’t have to add this information manually, which will save them a significant amount of time.
Your MIS can also help to reduce data with quick group selection. For example, in Arbor you can select absentees from your register and instantly send emails to their primary guardians with the help of our mail merge tool. You can even use a pre-made message template so you won’t have to type a single word!
Image 3: How you can follow up on students registered absent in Arbor
Not only will reducing data entry help to improve workloads, it will make your staff happier too. So – streamline your systems, make sure they integrate with your MIS, and set it all up to suit your school. If you’d like to hear more about how Arbor could help you reduce data entry at your school, why not drop us a message here?
Arbor MIS | School Improvement | School Operations
As a former Maths teacher at an Alternative Provision in Leeds, I’ve encountered more than my fair share of students and parents reluctant to get involved in school life. Here are the top five methods I found worked to encourage active engagement between your school and parents. Focus on the Positives At a school where
As a former Maths teacher at an Alternative Provision in Leeds, I’ve encountered more than my fair share of students and parents reluctant to get involved in school life. Here are the top five methods I found worked to encourage active engagement between your school and parents.
Focus on the Positives
At a school where most students had already been excluded, parents were used to receiving nothing but negative news. But effective parental engagement doesn’t mean only speaking when things go wrong. Tell parents about positive events too, with greater frequency. At the Alternative Provision, we’d send a quick text for positive events. If a student had a really good day, we’d use a phone call. Track what’s been said by keeping a communications log.
Set Regular Reviews
Parents Evenings aren’t just for telling parents about their child’s grades. They can also be an opportunity to talk about their social development, friendships, career goals, attitude and behaviour, and agree an action plan of how to support the child at home and at school. To increase the number of parents who attend, stop relying on sending kids home with sign-up sheets and use an online booking system, letting parents book slots whenever they want.
Image 1: A screenshot of the Arbor MIS Guardian Consultations feature
Get parents and students to work together
Education has changed so much since parents were in school, they may have no idea what their children are studying. Keep parents engaged by assigning homework that they can help their children complete. For primary school students, try giving tasks to read aloud. For secondary schools, let parents know what assignments their child has to complete and if it’s been submitted on time using a student or guardian portal.
Be open to feedback
Parents are most likely to get involved if they feel like they can make a real difference. Whenever parents visit or contact you, be willing to listen to their responses, answer their questions, and make them feel their contribution is welcomed. Make sure parents feel they can come to you if they have questions about how your school works, and let them know which person they should contact about certain issues.
Give them what they want
Despite your best efforts, there will always be some parents who won’t respond to a text, email or letter. You also can’t rely on students to pass on information. Maybe they’ll forget to mention something, or they simply don’t have a good relationship. To overcome this, give parents all the information they need in the palm of their hand by using an App. Not only does this notify parents instantly, but they can also refer back to it later if they forget.
Image 2: A screenshot of Arbor’s new in-app messaging feature
At Arbor, we’re always trying to improve how we can support schools to take parental engagement to the next level. We’ve recently introduced an in-app messaging feature that allows fast, free communication between schools and parents – take a look at this article to see how else you can use our new Arbor App!
MAT Conference | MAT Operations | MATs | School Improvement | School Operations
Today I will share with you the principles that keep REAch2 together. We call them our touchstones. These are the things that are common and that are important for us as an organisation. We call them touchstones because a touchstone 500 years ago was a measure of quality. It’s a standard by which we are judged.
Today I will share with you the principles that keep REAch2 together. We call them our touchstones. These are the things that are common and that are important for us as an organisation. We call them touchstones because a touchstone 500 years ago was a measure of quality. It’s a standard by which we are judged. Hence, their importance can be felt across our organisation.
They’re also a barometer of how we’re doing. As a director of HR, I can assure you: when we have challenging conversations, this is what we come back to. As I’ve said before, REAch2 isn’t a Starbucks where every coffee shop is the same. We’re the equivalent of a bespoke coffee shop, where quality is absolutely paramount. No teacher is the same; no two schools are the same, but we share these guiding principles.
So what does this mean in practice?
Let me give you some good examples:
We make time to meet. If you take everything else away, apart from aligning with your culture and your purpose, this is paramount. It’s the easiest thing to disappear out of your calendars. We enjoy working together. We are vibrant when we work together.
We don’t have head office, so we’re all in lots of different locations. We’ve gotten really good at Zoom or Skype calls and work hard at making it feel like we’re all in one room. Making time together is really important. That’s the senior leadership team, head teachers and teachers.
You’ll see on the website that we talk about the REAch2 family. That may sound corny to some, but we mean it. Being a family means that we actually hold each other to account. We have a chart that reminds us of who’s responsible for what: how central team is going to work with schools, what support they’re going to get. We challenge each other when things aren’t going so well.
One of the things we remind our headteachers and SLT about is “raise extra purpose”. We have to ensure that everyone understands why we do what we do. If you go onto our website, then you’ll see our 5 year strategy document, which outlines that REAch2 stands for ‘reaching educational attainment’. Under that, we’ve got 3 headings:
Image 1: REAch2 uses touchstones to stay focused on their guiding principles when on-boarding new schools to the MAT
Another key element: people. When I first joined REAch 2, I was clearly the executive. My focus would be leadership, leadership, leadership coupled with location, location, location. You can imagine that, having 60 schools, we’re not looking for the same head teacher for every single one. Our smallest school in East Anglia has 75 pupils, while our largest in London has over 1000. We’ve appointed every single one of our head teachers apart from 3. It’s not a ruthless statistic: it’s the results of painstaking clarity in what we’re about and what works.
When you think about it, it’s not difficult. Know what you’re looking for when you interview. Our first questions are about the ‘REAch2 fit’, not about experience. Our on-boarding plan for every single person on the central team is 6 months. It’s very specific, it’s very clear and the line manager takes ownership of it. We have an induction event, which is not just for head teachers, but for any of their SLT whom they wish to bring along. We have 3 regional teaching conferences a year, and we have one larger headteacher conference where everybody comes together.
It’s important to get people together to reinforce messages. When it comes to leadership and culture:
Practice is important. If our touchstones are non-negotiable and we’re clear about our mission, then actually it takes practice. Communicating something via a poster or on a website and doing it once won’t accomplish anything. It’s about reinforcing it on a daily basis. Over the last 6 months we’ve been looking at our own growth to make sure we maintain our purpose and principles when we add more schools. We’re not standing still.
One of the reasons why REAch2 is really keen to be at Arbor’s conference today is because our sector is still relatively new. This is a good reason to support each other. Don’t forget that whilst we’re all working on our own individual culture, people outside our sector will be looking at us. They will say: ‘what’s it like working there?’ So, your culture (our culture) is important. It will define us as a good place to work: a sector for a career and a sector which means business.
Assessments | School Improvement
A number of factors are making schools and MATs look again at the data they gather and use around pupil attainment and progress. These include, but are not limited to: Reducing teacher workload The proposed new, less data reliant, Ofsted Framework The challenge of standardising teacher assessments Balancing the autonomy that schools require to meet
A number of factors are making schools and MATs look again at the data they gather and use around pupil attainment and progress. These include, but are not limited to:
The traditional model in schools has, for some time, been a combination of formative assessment and summative teacher assessment.
Tracking formative assessment takes many forms, from simple notes against lesson plans to more formal ‘rubrics’ where banks of statements are ‘ticked off’. Whatever level of recording is used by schools, this is the main vehicle for improvement in student achievement as it’s ongoing and informs future provision.
Since the removal of ‘levels’, there’s been a huge amount of time spent by schools coming up with alternative summative assessment models. A lot of these ended up looking very much like the levels they were supposed to replace!
Whatever the summative model, the greatest challenges of a teacher-determined summative judgement have remained the same; ensuring consistency and validity of these judgements, and managing the workload caused by creating, moderating and collating judgements (let alone analysing the outcomes!)
There is also clear pressure from Ofsted to stop using flight paths to judge whether pupils’ progress is as desired. Only this weekend, Sean Harford (HMI and Ofsted’s National Director for Education) made it clear that this approach to target setting is, in his opinion, potentially demotivating. Flight paths are intrinsically linked to the use of summative teacher assessment scales – each implies the other is a valid approach.
In summary; schools and MATs face a real challenge. It’s essential for leaders to know the success, or otherwise, of their provision. This is particularly difficult for MATs as they scale and begin to cover a wider geographical area (and manage ever higher pupil and school numbers). Without attainment data then desktop surveys of the success, or otherwise, of schools and teachers is not possible.
What is needed is a method of providing the data required whilst reducing teacher workload, ensuring consistency of judgement and, depending on your approach, moving away from flight-paths.
This is where commercial standardised testing comes in. It solves many of the problems associated with summative teacher judgement:
The final piece of the jigsaw in getting standardised testing to work in your school or MAT is making sure you have analytics that are informative and easily aggregated.
Some MIS systems should be able to do this for you. For example, Arbor’s integration with RS Assessments’ PiRA and PUMA testing aggregates all of your test outcome data into the school and MAT MIS, with no extra data downloads and uploads, for easy and insightful analytics. Teachers can use the strand level analysis provided by RS Assessments to more accurately plan future curriculum content to meet the needs of the pupils. Senior leaders at schools and MATs can also use Arbor MIS to take action on their results – for example, by setting up intervention groups, or by building custom reports combining data from their PiRA and PUMA test results and Arbor MIS. If you don’t have access to this kind of analysis, many standardised test providers will offer their own dashboards or reporting services.
Fig 1.: Using Arbor’s integration with PiRA & PUMA tests in Arbor MIS
By adopting standardised assessments in place of teacher determined summative judgements, the time saved can be put back into planning and delivering great learning experiences for pupils whilst ensuring school and MAT leaders can still evaluate the outcomes achieved.
Get in touch to book a free demo to find out how Arbor MIS and RS Assessments from Hodder Education could transform your school or MAT, call us on 0208 050 1028 or email us at tellmemore@arbor-education.com.
For current customers: contact your Arbor Customer Success Manager or Account Manager to get this integration set up!
Over the past few months we’ve been giving our Assignments a fresh lick of paint, so that what used to be a minor feature on the lesson dashboard is now a full blown module schools can use as an electronic homework solution. Teachers have always been able to set students work directly from the lesson
Over the past few months we’ve been giving our Assignments a fresh lick of paint, so that what used to be a minor feature on the lesson dashboard is now a full blown module schools can use as an electronic homework solution. Teachers have always been able to set students work directly from the lesson dashboard, which will appear in their Student Portal so they can submit their work online, but we’ve made some big improvements to what you can then do with the data this generates. School leaders can now analyse how much work is being set in each subject, which teachers are setting the most work, and more!
We asked Carly McCulloch, Arbor Product Manager, to go over some of these features for you in a bit more detail:
We’ve made some improvements to the workflows for creating assignments, and tracking the submissions of assignments within Arbor for you and your teaching staff. These new additions to the assignment module have been developed based on feedback from school senior leadership, who wanted a way to see the submission statistics for assignments in their school, and check the quantity and quality of homework set by teaching staff. We take suggestions from schools very seriously, so please keep them coming!
Improvements to homework tracking include:
Fig. 1 – The Overview by Courses page showing automatically calculated stats for the number of assignments set and their submission rates
We’ve also not forgotten about our company mission to save teachers time. A lot of the new features should help teachers set and mark Assignments more easily, incentivising use of the system and streamlining workflows in your school:
Fig. 2 – A Student Marks Chart automatically generated for a marked assignment in Arbor MIS – the colour splits the marks down the median, the blue line shows the mean, and hovering over each bar shows further student level information
Fig. 3 – A teacher marking a grade-based English assignment, submitted by students online
We hope this module can help you to track assignment submissions, make them easier for students and teachers to manage, and ultimately improve the effectiveness of assignments in your school.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how Arbor’s simple, smart, cloud-based MIS system could transform the way your school or MAT works, save your staff time and improve student outcomes, get in touch via the contact form on our website
Arbor Insight | School Improvement
We’ve just updated our KS1 and KS2 free dashboards and premium Insight reports with the latest ASP disadvantaged data! This means that our Ofsted Readiness, Attainment & Progress and Closing the Gap reports all now include validated & disadvantaged KS2 data and disadvantaged data & phonics KS1 results. With the release of this new disadvantaged
We’ve just updated our KS1 and KS2 free dashboards and premium Insight reports with the latest ASP disadvantaged data!
This means that our Ofsted Readiness, Attainment & Progress and Closing the Gap reports all now include validated & disadvantaged KS2 data and disadvantaged data & phonics KS1 results.
With the release of this new disadvantaged data, the Department for Education has published new analysis about the disadvantage gap in UK schools. Looking at provisional phonics data from 2018, 70% of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) met the expected standard in phonics in year 1, compared to 84% of all other pupils. The gap between pupils eligible for FSM and all other pupils is 14 percentage points, and remains the same compared to 2017.
The gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged KS2 pupils (measured using the disadvantage gap index) has decreased in each of the last seven years, narrowing by 3% in the latest year and 13.2% since 2011.
If you’d like to know how your disadvantaged pupils have performed relative to national averages and other pupils within your school, you can find all the information you need in your Insight reports, which are available to view in your Arbor Insight portal. If you’ve already got an account, you can click here to log in, or click here to create an account for your school or MAT.
A closer look at what’s new in our Insight reports:
Since we imported this new data, we’ve made a few changes to your Arbor Insight reports. We’ve outlined the most important changes below.
1. Ofsted Readiness report
In the KS1 section of this report, we’ve added disadvantage cohort benchmarks to the Working at Expected Standard measures for Reading, Writing and Maths. For KS2, this added benchmark can be found in Averaged Scaled Score and Overall Progress Score for Reading, Writing and Maths.
Fig. 1: The bar graphs above show your school’s average as a benchmark against each demographic group, helping you to quickly see which cohorts are under-performing or exceeding the school average
Fig. 2: A screenshot of our Ofsted Readiness report
You may have also noticed changes in the condensed Closing the Gap section in our Ofsted Readiness report for both KS1 and KS2 data (see above image). For KS1, Working at the Expected Standard for Reading, Writing and Maths now has added disadvantaged measures. For KS2, this measure has been added under Averaged Scale Score in Reading and Maths. The text callout for these measures contain useful calculations which explain your data in plain english & calculate the percentage by which the gap for each measure has widened or narrowed in your school.
2. Attainment & Progress report:
The KS1 & KS2 Attainment and Progress reports also now contain disadvantaged benchmarks and cohort data for 2017/18, allowing you to benchmark this cohort against all other demographic groupings in your school. For KS1, this chart can be found in measures, Achieving Expected Standard: Y1 Phonics, Achieving Expected Standard and Working at Greater Depth within the Expected Standard for Reading, Writing and Maths. For KS2, this graph appears in Overall Progress Score for Reading, Writing and Maths.
Fig. 3: A screenshot of our Attainment & Progress report
3. Closing the Gap report: Focus on Disadvantage
This particular report is part of a series of 5 reports which help to identify the gaps between student groups, showing which groups are under or over performing relative to the school, group and national averages.
At the beginning of this report there is a star chart which shows the gaps between disadvantaged and EAL pupils compared to the rest of the school. For KS1, the measures shown in this graph are attendance and attainment, and for KS2 they are attendance, attainment and progress measures. This star chart is colour coded to help you identify any areas that need your attention (or indeed any areas that should be shouted about because there is no gap!); for example, a green star indicates there is no gap between the group and the school average, whilst an orange star indicates the group has performed below the school and national averages. A yellow star indicates the group has performed between them.
Fig. 4: A screenshot of the star chart at the beginning of the Closing the Gap report
Your reports clearly display the cohort size for each measure, so you know how much statistical significance each outcome has. This can help you know which areas you should be prioritising.
Finally, KS4 validated and disadvantaged data will be released in the next few weeks. Once it’s released, Arbor Insight portals & reports will be automatically updated.
As one of only a few accredited suppliers, we receive all of our data for Arbor Insight reports and dashboards directly from the DfE. Over 10,000 schools are now using Arbor Insight to benchmark their performance, so if you’re thinking of signing up, you’ll be in good company!
Arbor MIS | School Improvement
More and more software on the market offers ways of moving beyond the classic time saving tools of mail merges and reporting templates, into the realm of fully automated workflows. As with all new technologies, this offers opportunities to improve the way we work, as well as potential pitfalls, depending on how you use them.
An automated workflow is essentially one in which a single input from a user can trigger several resulting actions. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be entered and screens that need to be clicked through to achieve a desired result.
Every step in the process achieving the outputs above is one that would have to be performed manually by a staff member if they did not have automated workflows, and which can be performed in moments by automated computer software with access to accurate school records.
Some common examples of automated workflows in school software include:
The most obvious concern when setting up these workflows is human error. If a serious behaviour incident were to be incorrectly logged against the wrong student, that could result in a confused or upset parent on the phone to the school office that afternoon (not to mention the unearned earful the unsuspecting student could be in for when they got home). If you’re interested in automated workflows but your staff are not yet very technologically literate, it might be better to set up semi-automated systems with stopgaps for admins to approve comms before they’re sent out, before trialling full automation.
The root of this concern is the level of training required for all the individuals using the system. If inappropriately knowledgeable about the level of information that a parent portal shares, for example, a staff member may end up disseminating more of their personal opinions to parents than they would like. Similarly, if a workflow is inexpertly set up, the administrator may cause far too much or too little information to be transferred, to the extent that notifications become either irritating or simply not useful. This is why it’s absolutely vital to have excellent support and training resources from your software provider when setting up automated workflows, and why you should choose software which clearly outlines to administrators which workflows they have set up and how they can be edited. If there’s no way to work out what your outputs will be, don’t use that automated process – regroup, reconfigure, and retrain.
Even if you only implement semi-automation, and only for your most repetitive admin tasks, this can pay big dividends for staff time. This should give them more time to spend working with students. The best version of an automated workflow is one which removes the burden of data collection and processing from your staff, and lets you prioritise actually dealing with what the data tells you.
Automation also lends a degree of consistency to your policies, as the same results will always be generated from the same input, and staff don’t have to remember exact data processes perfectly every time themselves. While human error can lead to incorrect outputs, there’s far more chance for human error to creep in throughout systems which are entirely manual and paper based. We’ve seen firsthand how setting up consistent and reliable automated communications can have a big impact on parental engagement and school processes, particularly within behaviour workflows where consistency of both rules and rewards is really vital.
Castle Hill had a couple of issues with parent comms before they moved to Arbor MIS, because almost everything was based on paper. When children showed good or bad behaviour, teachers would write a note in the student’s planner, which the child would then take home for parents to check. However, children couldn’t always be relied upon to take their planners home with them – especially if they’d been given a negative behaviour note from their teacher! Now they’ve switched to Arbor, the staff at Castle Hill log behaviour points in the system, which automatically sends an email to the relevant guardians. Parents can also log into their Parent Portal for a live update on how their children are doing. Children are now better behaved because they know that their parents know what they’ve been up to, and the school has less paperwork to get through.
Overall, like any tool in education, the effectiveness of automation depends entirely on how you can use it. If you are going to set up automation, it needs to be in such a way that it demonstrably responds to your specific challenges, and can provide the maximum possible impact to the time constraints currently affecting your staff and the outcomes of your students.
If you’re a current Arbor MIS or Group MIS customer interested in setting up more of your automated features, get in touch with your Account Manager or email myteam@arbor-education.com. If you don’t use Arbor yet and would like to find out more about how we can automate repetitive tasks to save teacher time, get in touch on 0207 043 0470, hello@arbor-education.com, or via our contact form.
Ofsted Inspections | School Improvement | Teacher Workload
Every teacher knows that good behaviour in the classroom is fundamental to learning. This isn’t just anecdotal; we’ve had the data to back this up since 2009, when the University of Nottingham surveyed hundreds of head teachers in school improvement groups whose schools had sustained improvement over three years. One of the most highly rated
Every teacher knows that good behaviour in the classroom is fundamental to learning. This isn’t just anecdotal; we’ve had the data to back this up since 2009, when the University of Nottingham surveyed hundreds of head teachers in school improvement groups whose schools had sustained improvement over three years. One of the most highly rated factors in their improved outcomes was an ‘improved behaviour climate’, an effect felt through all phases but most strongly in Primary schools (see below). Critically, the lower a school’s performance was at the start of the improvement process, the higher the impact they were likely to report behaviour climate having.
Fig. 1 – The number of schools in each improvement group and the impact Head Teachers stated behaviour climate had on that improvement
The obvious question then, is what does an ‘improved behaviour climate’ mean? And how can you create one in your school? In the home, the generally accepted theory for how adult attitudes can affect children’s behaviour are Baumrind’s ‘four styles of parenting’:
An authoritative style can also be adopted in the school. Creating an authoritative behaviour climate requires both structure and responsiveness.
For structure, behaviour policies must be clear and understood by all staff and students for them to be effective. When a student misbehaves, they should know in advance exactly what the consequences will be, and they should see these consequences being consistently applied. If discipline is capricious and random, or depends on which teachers are around and what their personal policies are, both staff and students can never feel certain that they are doing the right thing at any given moment.
For responsiveness, there should still be some room in your policy for mitigating case by case circumstances, and considered communication between students and staff. Listening to students to find out their side of the story, or letting them know when their voices will be heard regarding the matter, can be a key part of developing their understanding of what went wrong. If students feel unfairly treated, ignored, and confused about why a rule even exists, they are unlikely to follow the rule again next time – they’ll just try slightly harder not to get caught.
One of the most important factors in authoritative parenting, or authoritative school operations, is having a consistently applied policy. There are plenty of ways to encourage consistency in your school. Posters of your behaviour policy in classrooms, introductory assemblies for new students and parents, and one on one explanations of rules when students have questions are all great ways to get your policy across. We also suggest using an electronic system to log your behaviour incidents, which will allow you to analyse behaviour across the school over time and improve your policies to target any problem areas.
Trying to remember by heart a complete, in depth set of behaviour policies can increase both staff workloads and inconsistency, achieving the opposite of your aim. If you have a clear, user-friendly behaviour system, ideally one that can automate repetitive admin work for you, you can make sure everyone who needs to be is kept in the loop. Using modern technology, it is possible to create a central repository for all your policies and information, so disciplinary action can only be applied with the proper incident or reasoning behind it.
Fig 3 – The automatic behaviour workflows in our MIS can be customised to trigger any communication or escalation based on your policy – e.g. issuing an after school detention that will appear in the relevant staff and student calendars, and emailing primary guardians, if a serious incident is recorded.
With ‘behaviour and attitudes’ staying a key part of the proposed new Ofsted framework, it could be time to review your behaviour systems and processes to create an ‘authoritative’ structured & responsive style. Overall, the exact policies that will be best for your school depend heavily on your specific situation and challenges, but making sure those policies are highly consistent and make sense to students and staff alike is one of the key ways to improve behaviour climates, and ultimately student outcomes.
Click here to read more of our blogs about preparing for the judgements in the new Ofsted framework
Arbor MIS | School Improvement | School Operations | Teacher Workload
During the winter, we had some lovely crisp mornings and could enjoy the heating coming on in the classrooms. We’re also inevitably faced with colds, flu, sickness bugs and travel delays! For the person responsible for arranging cover, this can be an incredibly stressful time of year (trust me, as cover co-ordinator and examinations manager
During the winter, we had some lovely crisp mornings and could enjoy the heating coming on in the classrooms. We’re also inevitably faced with colds, flu, sickness bugs and travel delays!
For the person responsible for arranging cover, this can be an incredibly stressful time of year (trust me, as cover co-ordinator and examinations manager for 18 months in a 15 year teaching career, I’ve been there!). For me, arranging cover was never just about getting a body into the room for supervision – I always wanted to allocate the most appropriate person for that particular lesson. In a secondary school, I needed to know the teachers that normally taught each subject, in order to avoid things like a French teacher covering a Maths lesson whilst a Maths teacher covered a Language lesson. I wanted the best people in front of the kids to reduce the impact on learning and minimise the workload stress on the staff. As the timetabler, this knowledge was ingrained in my mind, but for anyone stepping in to make cover arrangements in my absence, the task became almost impossible.
To mitigate against situations like this, in Arbor, we show not just available staff, but who is also a teacher of the same subject to actively support you in minimising the impact staff absence has on learning.
Image 1: Arranging cover in Arbor
Not only can you see which teacher is available that teaches the same subject, you can also request their agreement if you want to (this is always a useful feature when senior staff may have meetings booked!). You can, of course, still bulk select all of the lessons from a staff member to allocate as in house cover supervisor or supply in one go – meaning no more clicking into each lesson instance to add the same arrangements.
The first task of the day for any timetabler is to take a deep breath and open the schools’ emails whilst listening to the answer machine messages for staff absence. Within Arbor, you can mark multiple staff as absent either one at a time or all in one go, and you can also differentiate between a full day of sickness absence, or a 1 hour off-site meeting.
Image 2: Entering the details of a staff absence
Arbor’s ability to add attachments to staff absences (e.g. medical documents or a screenshot of a sick note) without separately logging into the HR module would have saved some of my finance colleagues from premature greyness!
Whilst teachers love the sight of a supply teacher (as they are then less likely to be needed for cover), this was one of my biggest nightmares. I could happily allocate them to the classes and print off cover slips, but then came the dreaded registers (I’ve sat at my desk for hours clicking into each individual class in order to print a register!). There was also the issue of wanting two copies: one to return to the office and one for the supply teacher to keep in class for reference. This either required a trip to the photocopier, or the time-consuming task of having to press print twice because no matter what settings I’d select, the MIS just would not let me have two copies.
In between this joyous process of printing and copying, another person would inevitably call in sick or have an emergency to tend to. I would then have to go back to my computer and close the screen I was using in order to start the process again for the newly absent person. Because Arbor is a cloud-based system, it can be open in more than one window (just like when you’re browsing the internet looking for information and open another ‘tab’ to look for something else), which saves you from repeating the same process time and time again.
In Arbor, it takes just a few seconds to download all of the registers you’ve selected, and then all you need to do is to hit the print button, choosing as many copies as you require. For a wet Wednesday during flu season and a full moon (we’ve all had those days!), I’d have saved hours if I’d been using Arbor instead of the other MIS I was using.
Image 3: An overview of staff absence, which lessons are being covered that day and by which teacher
With all the information you need in one place, Arbor gives you an overview of what’s going on in school that day, helping you to stay on top of what who’s covering what lesson and when. The green ‘cover slips’ button in the screenshot above allows you to print you a concise summary of cover staff for the staffroom notice board, as well as personalised slips for each teacher (with page breaks, so you haven’t got to get to the guillotine or scissors!).
So, if you were rushing around arranging cover for hours on end this winter, maybe it’s time to investigate a smarter, time-saving option. Get in touch with us via the contact form on our website to find out more about how Arbor’s simple, smart, cloud-based MIS could transform the way you operate your school!
We’ve just released our free annual KS2 Performance Summary! This report gives schools and academies an overview of their latest ASP data. Trends in your performance are clearly plotted over the last three years, and benchmarked against the national average, schools in the local authority and schools similar to you. We use Analyse School Performance
We’ve just released our free annual KS2 Performance Summary! This report gives schools and academies an overview of their latest ASP data. Trends in your performance are clearly plotted over the last three years, and benchmarked against the national average, schools in the local authority and schools similar to you.
We use Analyse School Performance data from the Department for Education to build this report. ASP data is not suppressed, so the cohort sizes are more accurate and representative, giving a more in-depth overview of your school’s performance.
Your Performance Summary Report covers school context, overall attainment, attainment, averaged scaled score and progress by subject, with a brief Closing the Gap section which focuses on prior attainment and gender. For a deeper dive into any of the measures present in this report, take a look at our premium reports that can be purchased from all school Insight portals.
Image 1: Attainment by subject: working at a higher standard
You can easily see trends from the last couple of years by looking at the arrows below this year’s outcome. These arrows are colour-coded so you can check if improvements in this measure are consistent with an established trend, or whether they’re a more recent development. Seeing your data presented in this easy-to-understand format can help expedite the questioning of your data. You can ask why 5 times and use socratic questioning to understand why and how your school reached the outcomes it did this year (we’ve written a blog about this – click here to read it!).
Image 2: Closing the gap: focus on gender page
For a more in-depth report focusing on each demographic in your school, you should use our Closing the Gap report bundle that contains 5 reports, each with an individual focus: disadvantaged pupils, SEN pupils, gender, ethnicity and prior attainment. These reports can help you narrow important attainment gaps within your school, as they show you in detail exactly where interventions need to be made.
How did you derive my LA and National averages?
We’ve benchmarked your school on a variety of measures to allow you to analyse your performance in a wider context. We only compared your School to the averages for other primary, secondary, or special schools (depending on your school type), to make the comparisons in the report more meaningful.
What is a school ‘like me’?
We created the schools ‘like you’ measure to give you the most meaningful comparison for your School. First, we filtered by schools of your type (primary, secondary, or special) for the reasons mentioned above. Next we filtered by size, ensuring that your school is compared to schools with a similar number of students. Finally we took your FSM, SEN and EAL data, weighted them based on the size of the attainment gaps at KS2, and combined them into a baseline score to find schools with similar demographic intakes to your School.
For example, if you’re a large rural secondary school with a lot of FSM students, your performance in each area will be benchmarked against other large rural secondary schools with a lot of FSM students. The schools ‘like you’ measure helps you account for your specific circumstances and understand why your performance might be above or below average.
If you’re a current user, you can log in to view your updated dashboards and reports immediately here: https://login.arbor.sc/auth/login
If you don’t already use Arbor Insight, click here to sign up for your free portal & view your performance dashboards & KS2 reports: https://login.arbor.sc/auth/register
Ofsted Inspections | School Improvement
In light of the new Ofsted framework placing weight on personal development through extra-curricular activities, we spoke to Alistair Endersby, a former national debating coach who’s twice brought teams to the World Schools Debating Championships and currently organises the Sixth Form enrichment programme at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. 1. Make it clear activities are
In light of the new Ofsted framework placing weight on personal development through extra-curricular activities, we spoke to Alistair Endersby, a former national debating coach who’s twice brought teams to the World Schools Debating Championships and currently organises the Sixth Form enrichment programme at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury.
Whilst some endeavours such as the school play or a Duke of Edinburgh award will require students to be committed from start to finish, most clubs benefit from an open door policy. If you set up a regular, publicised schedule, then students can drop in whenever they’re free. A successful club such as the politics and debating societies Alistair runs should, in his words, “be open to all comers each time, even if some keen students also take part in extra coaching to prepare them for competitions. The club’s committee are the fixed point of organisation, but the membership should be fluid.”
“If you can also open up your activity to a wider range of year groups then you should.” This allows younger students to develop a sense of responsibility organically by seeing the example of older students, rather than developing didactically under a set of stringent membership rules. “It’s good for the younger kids to see the older years engaging with interesting and serious things outside of the classroom, and you can form vertical links throughout your school by getting the older students in the club to coach the younger students. […] It has to be voluntary, too, to change the way it’s seen and add value to the experience.”
This open, inter-year culture is particularly helpful in secondary schools, allowing younger students to think about where they want to be in their activity and their learning by the time they reach their peers’ age; do they need to start taking music theory to progress in their orchestra? Should they do a sports leadership award if they want to be captain of the football team? Should they arrange work experience in their chosen area?
“It almost allows ‘gifted and talented’ to be self-selecting rather than a set program – what you’re rewarding is interest.”
“An atmosphere of mentorship has practical benefits as well, of course, in that it can free up staff time.” Once you’ve established a committee and a regular activity schedule across a range of disciplines, staff focus should be placed on developing their student committees and leading their activity to self-sustainability.
The everyday logistics of a club can be taken on by trustworthy student committee members, not only developing their general organisational skills but also their professionalism and confidence when speaking to adults. This can mean everything from asking the head of PE whether they can use the gym for practice to asking universities and speakers to visit the school. “Students asking can be more persuasive than teachers asking – especially if the university thinks of you as a target school”.
In the case of Bishop Wordsworth’s; “At the end of assembly when the head asks for notices, there’s no distinction made between student and staff announcements. The committee members have to put their hand up, stand up, and talk, or their club won’t get publicised. Trusting students to make announcements is potentially quite daunting, but very valuable”. It’s all about building up value, until your students are invested enough in the activity to reduce the burden on their teachers.
“Gaining confidence in their abilities is beneficial academically and beyond the curriculum, in terms of their wider confidence and what they can bring to university and the world. Teamwork, leadership, logistics, organisation, persuading people to help you, and negotiating with adults will all leave them more prepared for the future. It’s the kind of thing employers say schools don’t do.”
Having enabled the students themselves to coordinate internal activities, staff will have more time to organise higher level plans for their clubs and societies, that give your students goals to work towards.
“Although inter-school competition sounds like a luxury, it makes the activity bigger and higher status than just your school, and invests time in a few students who are then likely to take on roles running the activity within the school, and passing it on to others.”
“At Bishops the Year 12s who are now entering national contests run the internal Year 10 debating contest, which will make them better equipped to run the whole society once they hit Year 13, because they’ve improved by judging other people’s work. In turn, the Year 10s run a smaller scale public speaking contest for Year 8s.”
Competitions shouldn’t only be thought of as something for the students to put in their CV or Personal Statement, but as something that will actively challenge students, improving confidence, teamwork, and outcomes. If you usually only run casual internal competitions, these can justify the cost of entering regional or national contests by acting as a basis for who is entered. In turn, the prize of being taken to a more prestigious event can increase the popularity of internal activities to both enter and spectate.
“For instance, just a debate workshop would have a pretty low turnout, but showcasing your contest entrants and trialling them openly appeals to the spectating students’ competitive spirits, and trains the viewers at the same time by letting them watch the best the school has to offer”.
If your committee has been able to take on internal responsibilities, the inter-school competition can then be the focus of staff time put into the club. “You can give your contest entrants a bit of elite experience, stretch them beyond the training they would just have within the school, and add status to the activity to in turn inspire younger students”.
The last thing we asked Alistair was what he would say to a teacher or school leader who doesn’t believe they have the time to fully develop their extra-curricular program.
“One of my core beliefs and values in teaching lies in what you do outside the classroom. It’s worth the school committing to and investing in, for both their students and their teachers. It’s possible to build in a way that it becomes self-sustaining. That’s not necessarily a job to give a brand new teacher, but if one in their second or third year, gaining in professional confidence, can be given the time to properly set up over the course of a year, then the students that get involved in that activity will feel invested in by their school.”
If you want to read more about the new Ofsted judgements and ideas for how you can prepare for them, click here.
School Improvement | School Operations
This Autumn term, we organised 54 Insight Training sessions that were attended by teachers and members of Senior Leadership Teams from schools across the country. As well as looking at how Arbor’s Insight reports can help you to benchmark your schools results and streamline your operations, the sessions also demonstrated how you can use your
This Autumn term, we organised 54 Insight Training sessions that were attended by teachers and members of Senior Leadership Teams from schools across the country. As well as looking at how Arbor’s Insight reports can help you to benchmark your schools results and streamline your operations, the sessions also demonstrated how you can use your performance data and Arbor Insight portal to support and inform your annual school improvement cycle.
Each year, before you make any decisions based purely on your headline measures, you should be asking more questions about your data. This is to make sure that your decisions are not based on any bias or previous assumptions that you might not have even realised were affecting your improvement strategies. Your Arbor Insight reports help you do this by telling you:
But you still might not know:
Until you’ve answered those two why questions, you can’t figure out how to improve. We have two approaches to share to help with this.
The first is the Socratic approach. This approach requires you to think about your data from various angles to uncover any hidden assumptions you might have before taking action. You should ask:
Questions that clarify
“Do boys underperform in reading in all year groups?”
Questions that probe assumptions
“Do our pupils really enter school with low attainment?”
Questions that probe reasons and evidence
“Is there a reason to doubt the evidence?”
Questions about viewpoints and perspectives
“Should we look for another reason for this?”
Questions that probe implications and consequences
“How does this affect SEN pupils?”
Questions about questions
“Why do you think I asked this question?”
Categorising them like this encourages you to ask a wider range of questions and uncover the specific problem.
The second approach is asking“why” 5 times:
As those of you who teach or have younger children will know, one of their favourite, and sometimes most frustrating, games to play is the constant asking of “why?”. In fact, this single, repetitive question is a really useful way to dig deeper into the context behind your results and again, challenge your assumptions.
As a rule of thumb, 5 “why”s will usually get you to a root cause:
“Only 70% percent of children are working at the expected standard in writing”
WHY?
“Too many girls don’t make the expected standard”
“Progress for girls is slow across KS2”
“They start off poorly, with slower progress in lower KS2 than upper KS2”
“Expectations are too low in lower KS2”
“Poor teacher knowledge of what could be achieved”
In this case, “poor teacher knowledge of what could be achieved” is the root cause. You’ll know when you get to the root cause because it’s usually something specific and tangible. Unlike vague statements like “progress is slow” or “expectations are low”, it’s something you can actually address.
To log in and see your free ASP dashboard and reports for Phonics, KS1, KS2, and KS4, click here. Our Insight training sessions are over for the year, but if you’d like to host one for your area or find out how else Arbor can help your school or MAT, you can get in touch here.
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