Research project: Improving the capacity of School Effectiveness data to inform school improvement and student learning and aspirations

The Fischer Family Trust (FFT) is a charitable organisation which provides detailed analyses of individual pupil attainment & progress, and estimates of their academic potential to each of the 22,000+ maintained schools in England and Wales. These data produced by FFT are highly respected and widely utilised by practitioners in schools in order to inform their self-evaluation and school improvement initiatives. Despite the scale of their work the trust’s Data Analysis Project is run by a small team of staff from their office in South Wales.

Chris Downey, Tony Kelly, Daniel Muijs and Priya Khambhaita from the Leadership, School Improvement and Effectiveness Research Centre have been commissioned by FFT to conduct research into how the presentation of data affects its interpretability and utility by a wide audience including local authority education staff, school leaders, teachers, students and parents. The wealth of academic attainment and progress data gathered for young people in England now extends from early-years education (3-5 years) in the form of the Foundation Stage Profile, through to the outcomes of Higher Education. Among a number of lines of enquiry the research project will conduct a range of statistical analyses to explore the potential of pupil-level attainment and progress data to inform school improvement and learning at both ends of the compulsory phase of education. For the post compulsory phase the project will investigate the potential of data to inform the information, advice and guidance given to young people as they make choices for their Key Stage 4 (age 14-16) programmes of study and beyond to post-16 education and training and on to Higher Education.

Funding Body: Fischer Education Project