Aim of presentation: to examine the nature of WSV to provide a perspective on how measures of WSV contribute to a view of a school’s performance to look at how simple-to-use tools can support teacher- level research into comparative achievement. Within School Variation and School Improvement

What is Within School Variation?

“In schools where overall progress is broadly similar, there are significant variations in pupil progress between subjects and between different pupil groups.” - Fischer Family Trust Within School Variation "We have always known that there is a difference in performance between schools. But what can make a bigger difference is the experience that children have within one school. So a child can do really well in one subject and not do well in another subject. And that can make an even bigger difference to children's life chances than differences between schools." - Jane Creasy, Assistant Director of Research, NCSL

Within School Variation is the variation in provision as experienced by different groups of learners Within School Variation

Source : DCSF Within School Variation is over 4 times greater than ‘between school variation’. WSV is over 14 times greater when allowance is made for free school meals and prior attainment. How big is the problem?

Prof. John West-Burnham, Senior Research Adviser at the NCSL speaking about Within School Variation “WSV is now understood to be one of the biggest barriers to school effectiveness and improvement. In many schools there is not consistency in terms of learning and teaching across the whole school. WSV is one of the biggest challenges to school leaders. “How do we guarantee that every student receives an appropriate and effective access to learning across their whole curriculum experience? “It is not about blanket uniformity. It is not about blind consistency. It is about eliminating inappropriate variation. “In our own private lives we do not accept inconsistencies in services; in restaurants, in shops, from the doctor, the dentist, the garage; and there is no reason either why a school should tolerate inconsistency”.

Is WSV just about teaching?

Teaching Learning What is the relationship between teaching and learning? Teaching and Learning don’t have a direct relationship. Many contextual factors can hinder or enhance the impact of teaching on learning.

Teaching Learning It is more like this. 1. Learning that occurs concurrently with teaching (planned) 2. Teaching that isn’t making an impact (not good) 3. Learning that happens when the teacher isn’t there (good) What is the relationship between teaching and learning?

Teaching Learning This is the model that schools should aspire to What is the relationship between teaching and learning?

Teaching Learning It is teaching quality, learner disposition and context which influences the effectiveness of learning Context What is the relationship between teaching and learning?

How are schools judged?

Which local contextual circumstances are influencing learning effectiveness? A key school self-evaluation question What does the RAISEonline data say about the school? A key school inspection question

What is the better basis on which a school should be judged? High Standards High Achievement and Low Negative Variation 5 A*-CsHow well every pupil achieves Some Children MatterEvery Child Matters Headline figures can hide significant pockets of underachievement Headline figures should show how well every child achieves Good Leadership = high attainment Good Leadership = evidence of doing the best for every pupil League table positionMeasures of Within School Variation School Improvement = more 5A-Cs School Improvement = less negative variation

Without teacher-level research into pupil performance With teacher-level research into pupil performance Performance analysis is done by the few and passed to the many All teachers are involved with analysing their pupils’ performance Key evidence = RAISEonline scores Key evidence = teacher research into current Y11 performance Leadership equates to CVA Leadership equates to successful intervention across subjects Judged by official data Secure school-level evidence of effectiveness National aggregate group normsLocal contextual circumstances A tendency for data to be seen as an outcome in itself Aware that dots on graphs equate to individual pupils and their aspirations The responsibility for school standards resides solely with Ofsted The school takes the lead on QA What advantage does the data-confident, self-evaluating school have?

“Schools that are proactive in showing inspectors the evidence of their own pupil-level analysis and research tend to do better in their inspection.” - Dr. Mike Treadaway, Fischer Family Trust, Naace ‘Making Information Work’ Conference

How should schools judge themselves?

Data analysis is not just something done by the few and passed down to the many – but should involve all teachers finding out about the impact of their teaching on different groups of learners. Top Down or Bottom Up?

Two sides to the same coin Find out how good every teacher is at teaching Enable teachers to investigate the impact of their teaching (Top Down) (Bottom Up)

Investigating the impact of teaching “Projects which look at differences in the impact of teaching require a climate of openness, trust and collegiality.” - NCSL WSV project report

How Data confident is your school? Take the test at:

Data analysis tools can support action research into local contextual factors

What are the professional tools of the teacher’s trade? A largely oral tradition Where are the equivalent tools to a doctor’s stethoscope and blood pressure monitor?

What have headteachers said about this approach?

"Wow! We have been bowled over by the power of the data and the information 4Matrix has given us just in the first few hours today. “My data manager was so impressed that he insisted on taking over the first part of our meeting this evening with a presentation of what 4Matrix told us about our data. I only gave it to him at this morning!” “All my team who saw it immediately realised its potential and were asking probing questions about pupil performance.” - Ged Ward, Headteacher, Macclesfield School, Cheshire

"4Matrix is a brilliant product. It has helped take the sweat out of working with student data and its level of interactivity is superb.” “We have been able to research differences between comparative performance for student groupings of our choice in a way that our school's information management system simply can't.” “The use of 4Matrix has helped us plan coherent change to make a difference to teaching and learning and hence standards“ - Allan Foulds, Headteacher, Cheltenham Bournside School

"Attainment scores on their own don't do justice to schools successfully working with disadvantaged students, refugee children or non-English speakers. 4Matrix levels the playing field between schools with differing profiles of attainment by looking at comparative student achievement.” “Using this approach, a school that has a higher-than-normal profile of disadvantaged students can feel confident that its efforts to raise achievement will be properly recognised in the system that judges schools.” - Barbi Goulding, Principal of Paddington Academy

What have teachers said about this approach?

"Wonderful system! Paints a very clear picture of ability compared to achievement." "An amazingly simple-to-use-for-us-technophobes piece of software - which is highly informative and an extremely useful tool in analysing exam data. Really recommended." - MFL Dept "An easy-to-use tool that enables department evaluation and the opportunity to develop strategies for improvement." "4Matrix has provided us with a very useful tool in evaluating our pupils' examination performance. It has helped identify our strengths and weaknesses and should enable us to improve teaching an learning." "4Matrix provided me with a clear, no-nonsense evaluation of my results." - Geography Dept

How can we measure variation?

Data tools like the above can measure comparative achievement and group variation as well as support action-research A drag and drop tool

How might this graph be explained?

Automatic commentaries turn the visual picture of comparative achievement into a numerical commentary

In the new version of 4Matrix the group residual for every teaching group can be displayed.

Data Confident schools don’t wait for Ofsted to judge them. They know themselves well and will have key data about the performance of the current year 11 – not just about pupils that have now left the school. We can use tools that can show the impact of teaching. We can use an action-research approach to school improvement. We can find out what specific local circumstances impact on the work of particular groups of learners. We can use tools that don’t make us feel you have to be a statistician to use them. We can make ICT talk our language. Some thoughts about using performance data

“Having lots of data is not what self- evaluation is about. What counts is having the right tools to make top-level judgements on that data.” - Barbi Goulding, Principal, Paddington Academy

1. How important is WSV as a focus for standards in school? 2. What are the key characteristics of the data-confident, self-evaluating school? Questions