Insight Benchmarking for Excellence Insight is a new, dynamic tool for the senior phase in Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) It is a benchmarking tool and a tool for professional reflection and self-evaluation It emphasises the connectedness and coherence inherent in CfE

Insight - Aligned with CfE Outcomes focussed Aims to help ‘raise attainment for all’ and reduce the gap between higher and lower attainers Measures attainment and achievement at point of exit from school Insight is a benchmarking tool and also a tool for professional reflection and self-evaluation, with the aim of continuous improvement. It is focused on outcomes for pupils and the four key national measures take attainment and achievement at the point of exit from school. This reflects the innovative approaches found in CfE in the senior phase in schools and also that no longer do we expect everyone to do the same things at the same time with the same groups of pupils. Insight also allows us to look at different cohorts of pupils, such as boys, girls, pupils with EAL and looked after pupils. Insight takes account of a school’s context, including making use of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. A key aim of Insight is that it will give us the tool to ‘close the gap’ which is a key national priority. Reflects performance within a school’s context Provides the ability to look at different cohorts of pupils

A dynamic benchmarking tool Access for all secondary school staff Easy and intuitive to use Provides a rounded picture of performance Measures units where appropriate Includes a wide range of SCQF credit-rated awards and learning programmes Insight is deliberately aimed at all school staff. It is hoped that staff throughout a school will be able to engage with Insight, including classroom teachers, faculty groups, pupil support teams, principal teachers and senior leaders. It has been designed, from the very first, to be easy and intuitive to use, making use of dashboards and various filters. It gives a rounded picture of performance by considering SQA courses, units (whether stand-alone or as parts of courses) and other award providers.

Inclusion of wider awards Wider awards must meet set criteria: Be on the SCQF Fit CfE principles - Meet Insight technical requirements Wider awards must meet the criteria of being aligned with the principles of Curriculum for Excellence, be on the SCQF framework and be able to meet Insight’s technical requirements (for example, being able to work with Scottish Candidate Numbers). ‘Wider awards’ will be an increasing feature of Insight in years to come.

Valuing wider achievement Just one way in which information will be provided on wider achievement e.g. pupil profiles, school handbooks and inspections Decisions for wider achievement should be made on the best needs of the learner rather than on the basis of the awards included in the tool We have been working with a range of awards providers who wish to be included in the tool There are set criteria: they must be on the SCQF, fit with CfE principles and meet specific technical requirements The tool is just one way in which wider achievement should e.g. pupil profiles, school handbooks and inspections Awards should be planned around the needs of the learner, whether they are in the tool or not. Those awards that are not included can be equally valuable to the learner. Insight is just one way in which information will be provided on wider achievement and other approaches such as profiling, standards and quality reporting and school handbooks are as important for promoting and recognising the full range of young people’s wider achievements across the school.

A tool for professional reflection Access for all secondary school staff Aims to encourage professional reflection and collaborative working Prompts reflective questions Insight is, above all, a tool for professional reflection. All staff will have access to Insight and will be encouraged to engage with it as part of their work as reflective professionals. This could happen through individual work and also in collaborative and collegiate working within and between schools.

Using Insight as part of your improvement process . This is an example of how Insight could be used as part of a school’s improvement process

Using Insight as part of your improvement process Outcomes for young people . The starting point is a consideration of the outcomes for young people: what is it that we are measuring, and why?

Using Insight as part of your improvement process Outcomes for young people What does the data show us? . Looking at the outcomes, what does the data show us? Where are we doing well? Where do we need to take a closer look if things are not going so well?

Using Insight as part of your improvement process Outcomes for young people What does the data show us? Identify what we want to improve . After reflection and evaluation, what is it that we want to improve?

Using Insight as part of your improvement process Outcomes for young people What does the data show us? Identify what we want to improve Identify actions to take . Knowing what we want to improve, what actions are we going to take: At whole-school level At faculty or departmental level At individual class teacher level?

Using Insight as part of your improvement process Outcomes for young people What does the data show us? Identify what we want to improve Identify actions to take Use data to measure success Having taken these actions, what does the data show us afterwards? Have we improved the outcomes for our young people? How far have we progressed? What do we still need to do?

Updating Insight August 2014 February 2016 February 2015 August 2015 Local measures updated February 2016 February 2015 Dashboards updated Dashboards updated Dashboards (including the four National Measures) will be updated every January/February For the leavers of the previous session Local Measures (courses, subjects and curricular areas) will be updated every August For the cohort chosen by the user (ie whether leavers or not) For the session just ended This ties in with the annual improvement planning cycle, in which the school’s strategic plan will be updated in the spring using the national measures, while in the late summer the departmental / faculty reviews etc will focus on performance in the most recent awards diet. August 2015 Local measures updated

Out with the old … Insight is replacing STACs (Standards Tables and Charts) STACs was not really a ‘user-friendly’ product STACs served its purpose and the new tool has a number of enhancements STACs only considered SQA courses, and schools do much more than these (important though they are) STACs also stemmed from the time when everyone did the same thing at the same time, such as eight Standard Grades followed by five courses in S5 and so on Yeargroup threshold scores such as ‘five of more at level 5 in S4’ are no longer appropriate under CfE, given the increasing diversity of practice across Scotland and will no longer be published

… In with the new Learning Partners Intuitive dashboard As soon as the user signs on to Insight, the four national measures appear on the screen: Increasing post-school participation (school leavers in a positive destination) Improving attainment in literacy and numeracy Improving attainment for all Tackling disadvantage by improving the attainment of lower attainers relative to higher attainers (attainment versus deprivation) Thus there is never any doubt as to what the most important measures are: they are there as soon as the user signs on Insight makes use of an interactive dashboard, which allows the user to drill down into any of the measures Virtual Comparator National measures

The Virtual Comparator The key benchmark Characteristics of pupils in a school matched with pupils from across Scotland with similar characteristics 10 matching pupils are randomly selected based on gender, additional support needs, latest stage and the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation Another improvement upon STACs is the move from comparator schools to the Virtual Comparator The Virtual Comparator is built up from pupils from around Scotland who have the same background characteristics as the pupils at your school Ten pupils from around Scotland will be chosen for every one of your school’s Full details can be found in the technical notes on the log in page The Virtual Comparator will be the key benchmark by which schools will evaluate themselves. Two key questions will be (for any measure): How is the school doing year-on-year, ie are we improving? How is the school doing compared to its virtual comparator?

Learning Partners Find partners via ranked list of real schools Propose/accept partnership requests Schools that become Learning Partners will be able to share data relating to local measures Encourage professional dialogue between and among different schools The Virtual Comparator is going to be the key benchmark by which schools assess performance The pupils are taken from across Scotland The Learning Partners feature will allow schools to engage in partnerships with schools from around the country Schools will be listed in an order suggested by Insight This order will rank schools according to ‘closeness’ in terms of the background characteristics of the pupils Learning Partners will be able to share all data with each other It is hoped that Learning Partners will engage with each other in dialogue about key issues such as pedagogy

National benchmarking measures Show four nationally consistent measures Focus on ‘leavers’ since point of exit is a consistent point of comparison Use ‘latest’ and ‘best’ National benchmarking data available for all users insight.scotxed.net   For the national benchmarking measures, schools will look at their cohort of leavers from the previous session These leavers will come from S4, S5 and S6 and so will be a mixture of all of these This ‘leavers’ cohort’ will be used in all four national measures Thresholds by year group (eg five or more awards at Level 5) will no longer be published: rather the measures will focus on the leavers’ cohort, the mixture of S4, S5 and S6 The national measures are: increasing post-school participation improving attainment in literacy and numeracy improving attainment for all tackling disadvantage by improving the attainment of lower attainers relative to higher attainers. Additional measures on curricular areas, subjects and courses are also available for use at school level

Local benchmarking measures The dashboard of local measures (updated also in January / February) provides staged-based versions of the dashboard of national measures Additional measures on curricular areas, subjects and courses will be published in August Available at individual school level and for the school’s local authority Available also to Learning Partners insight.scotxed.net   The local measures will focus on cohorts of pupils chosen by the user These cohorts will therefore not consist only of leavers Local measures will allow us to consider questions such as: how did S5 perform? How did the pupils studying Higher English perform? National 5 biology? The dashboard of local benchmarking measures shows staged-based versions for the national dashboard information, with the default being S5. Graded and ungraded courses, together with curricular areas, will also be shown.

Development timescales September 2013 Preview Edition Awards 2013 Curricular areas, graded & ungraded courses 2013 Virtual schools with updated methodology April 2014 Preview Update Stage cohort version of national dashboard measures Relative value (interim solution) Learning Partners August 2014 Insight - Live First release with live data Further awards providers Additional measures Post go-live Continual development Focus groups Case studies This shows an overview of the development timescales for the tool Scottish Government has involved stakeholders in the development of the tool and released a series of prototypes – each with a number of enhancements in response to feedback Schools and local authorities were both given access to the Preview Edition in September The Preview Update was released in the middle of April The live edition will be released at the end of August. It is likely that local authorities and schools will be able to access the tool through the MIS provider (further details will follow)

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