The Strategic Use of Electronic Data in Education ■ Mike Bostock, Immediate Past Chair, Naace Developments in the use of Electronic Data in Education and steps taken towards a Naace position

Management Information Systems Learning Platforms Every Child Matters Curriculum and Assessment E-Portfolios Education Information Systems Principles to drive new developments Some Conclusions Some Questions Some consequences Where are the growth areas? What role will Naace play?

‘Every Child Matters’ will only work if educational professionals are empowered with a broad set of data about the performance and context of individual pupils. The main pressures for growth are for the development of Learning Platforms, the need for broader school performance data, and government need for statistical information from schools. The Growth Areas for the use of Electronic Data

Management Information Systems “The successful provision and use of management information directly supports the drive to raise standards in schools. MIS systems provide leadership teams with essential tools to support personalised learning strategies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their learning institutions.” source: Becta

Becta intends to regulate the MIS market to: improve value for money create open technical and data standards ensure interoperability of data make technical support more cost effective increase use of MIS for school improvement improve electronic data collection Management Information Systems

"The term learning platform describes a broad range of ICT systems used to deliver and support learning. The government's target is that all pupils will be able to access a personalised online workspace, capable of supporting an e-portfolio, by " 'Learning Platforms: Making IT Personal', DfES publication, December Learning Platforms

Continuity and extension of learning Increasing stimulating/motivational experiences Providing wider and more flexible courses Involvement in and management of target setting Tracking learning and interventions Improving planning and preparation Assessment for and of learning Reducing administration easing organisation Involving and communicating with parents Exploring progression by ability not age Offering learners greater autonomy Learning Platforms Source : Becta

E-Portfolios An e-portfolio is an electronic format for learners to record their work, their achievements and their goals, to reflect on their learning, and to share and be supported in this. It enables learners to re-present the information in different formats and to take the information with them as they move between institutions.

Assessment reform that exploits a more ambitious use of electronic data is overdue The curriculum is undergoing significant modernisation - but traditional assessment methods still provide shackles and filters on the achievements of learners Next generation assessment systems will: be integrated with e-learning use a broader set of learning metrics automate assessment and learner feedback provide adaptive learning Curriculum and Assessment

A significant driving force for the use of Electronic data in education is Every Child Matters (ECM). Every Child Matters creates a thirst for a broader performance data set and pupil contextual information. The information demands of Every Child Matters

What information is there about the whole child? Family information, health information, social context data, population trends, labour market, local skills needs, curriculum offer, provider comparisons, pupil destinations, deprivation index, employment trends, teenage parents, youth offenders, looked after children, abusive parents, behaviour, attendance, truancy, special needs, achievement, attainment, learning preferences, broader pupil achievement, within school variation, student satisfaction levels Where is this information held? Social Services, Education school improvement records, Special Educational Needs services, Psychology services, health records, Primary Care Trusts, Connexions, Local Authorities, Learning and Skills Councils, FE colleges, PRUs, police records, DfES, Ofsted, examination boards, school MIS, teachers’ markbooks, virtual learning environments, Transition Plans, ad hoc school records

ECM was set up to prevent vulnerable pupils falling through the net ECM requires Primary Care Trusts, Social Services, Education and Police working together ECM requires a multi-agency approach in Local Authorities, reflected in the way that schools will use pupil information Underpinning this work is the need for the combination of all sources of data into a single repository which will enable alerting, tracking, progression management and personalisation Key questions about Every Child Matters

Are there groups in our community that we are failing? Does education provision meet the needs of all pupils? How can we use information more effectively to empower education professionals at every level? How can schools make use of a broader dynamic performance data set to offer real personalised learning? If Every Child Matters, why do we continue to use %5 A-C as a measure of how well schools do their job? In the School of the Future we will judge schools on how well they prepare all pupils for their future careers and lives. How shall we do it? Questions which ‘Every Child Matters’ will seek to answer

Education Information Systems …… School MIS Learning Platform Integrated Children’s System attainment achievement attendance exclusion post code learning profiles progress strengths and weaknesses targets e-portfolios At school level.... At National Level Information stored in an MIS will link to a Learning Platform to provide complete learner progress profiles Background information about learners can trigger positive intervention by education professionals At LA level LA data services Integration of information previously held in many places supports strategic planning. Additional data services and tools Data interoperability will allow schools to use a range of additional data services (FFT, Raiseonline) and data analysis and reporting tools

Key design features on new Education Information Systems (EIS) will include: Ease of use and low maintenance costs Data flow – enabling re-purposing of data More emphasis on interpreting data rather than just storing it Dynamic reporting to a range of partners - including pupils

The Strategic Development of MIS in Education 14 Principles that should underpin developments in the use of Electronic Data by Don Passey Chair of the BCS Working Party on Data Management Senior Research Fellow, Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University For the full picture see Don’s research paper ‘The Strategic Development of MIS in Education - the Two Hearts of Data Management: Technology and Curriculum’ (Naace 2006)

The Strategic Development of MIS in Education 1. The data and analysis techniques that are essential for informing effective teaching and learning should be identified 2. We need to integrate an understanding of how pupils learn in order to define data and assessment requirements 3. The key relationship between the metrics of learning and the collection of data needs to be defined 4. The collection of formative data, as well as summative data, should inform monitoring and feedback mechanisms

The Strategic Development of MIS in Education 5. A distinction should be drawn between individualised targets and group targets 6. An entitlement to access to data for every group of users should be identified 7. Teachers should receive specific training in the use of data intelligence 8. The collection and application of data knowledge should take place locally, but data records could be stored remotely

The Strategic Development of MIS in Education 9. The effort needed to collect data needs to be balanced against its value 10. Measures of data reliability should be integrated into every stage of data collection and use 11. Once data management systems meet minimum requirements, responsibility for their effective use lies with the end user 12. Data access, flow and reliability will underpin useable, flexible and accountable data systems

The Strategic Development of MIS in Education 13. Systems must first demonstrate coherence before they can become reliable, dependable and sustainable 14. How data intelligence functions are supported by each group of IT professionals needs to be identified

Developments in the use of electronic data should, as a priority, demonstrate how they improve learning effectiveness and the management of learning. Obstacles to data flow need to be removed at an early stage in order to enable growth and innovation. ‘Standards’ for data interchange need to allow for curriculum reform, changes in how we monitor the growth of a broader range of learning attributes, and the development of more innovative assessment methods. Some consequences ….

There are significant professional implications to the growth in electronic data use. Most professional roles in ICT and Education will require an engagement with the use of electronic data, as significant as an expertise in ICT and learning Perspectives and interests in this area are fragmented. Which group of people is best placed to pull this together? Naace will seek to be influential in this area by promoting the perspective of practitioners. What role will Naace play?

Developments in this area should involve all stakeholders from the ICT and data communities who have a professional interest in positive, managed developments in this area Teachers’ use of electronic data should be seen as an important area of professional growth in the pursuit of Personalised Learning and in support of the aims of ‘Building Schools for the Future’ Schools, and those who support them, should aim to be ‘data smart’ and ‘data confident’.

Some conclusions... The ECM agenda will require data aggregation across IT systems in order to track the development of the whole child Electronic data is a key area of development as important to ICT professionals as teaching and learning Data analysis and feedback systems will become more widespread, more integral with job functions, and more accessible by teachers, learners and parents All those who work in this area need to be data smart and data confident

Some conclusions... An effective national system for managing data, linking with school learning and management systems, will offer greater personalised learning, achievement and protection for pupils Naace expects to extend its range of professional support to members who operate in this area Naace would be pleased to hear the views of members on which activities would be of most value.

Some questions... Pupils will increasingly be educated in more than one school from age 14. How can electronic performance information be effectively managed in this situation? Data interoperability is the key to enabling the use of many tools and to merge data from many sources. What targets for effective operation would be reasonable to set? Education professionals at every level have a need to access subsets of the broader information profile of every child. How can we ensure that data use is effective, yet meet with child protection and data protection requirements?