1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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?

9. 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?

10. 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?

11. 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?

12. 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?

13. 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

14. 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

15. … 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

16. 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?

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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 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)

21. @Insight Benchmarking
@Insight Benchmarking
@Insightupdates
#Insightgolive