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

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Mike Bostock, New Media Learning

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What is Within School Variation?

“In schools where overall progress is broadly similar, there are significant variations in pupil progress between subjects and betweendifferent 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 NCSLspeaking 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)

1.

2. 3.

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 StandardsHigh Achievement and Low Negative Variation

5 A*-Cs How well every pupil achieves

Some Children Matter Every 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 position Measures of Within School Variation

School Improvement = more 5A-CsSchool 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 scoresKey evidence = teacher research into current Y11 performance

Leadership equates to CVALeadership equates to successful intervention across subjects

Judged by official data Secure school-level evidence of effectiveness

National aggregate group norms Local 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 27.04.07

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: www.4matrix.org/toolkit

Data analysis tools can support action research into local contextual factors

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 11.30 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 variationas well as support action-research

A drag and drop tool

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

For more information please visit:

www.4matrix.org

Mike Bostock, New Media Learningmike@4matrix.org