Decisions for Learning

I have done a fair bit of reading, and I am fast coming to the conclusion that one of the big problems with assessment in schools is the proportion of it which does not directly help the kids to make progress and learn something better.

AfL is great, but it is often used as a kind of religion whereby the kid, once indoctrinated, can follow reach enlightenment, almost by themselves, once our two ticks and a cross has been added to the bottom of their list.

What is missing, I think, is a smarter decision from some teachers about what we assess, how we assess, and what we do with the findings. The final of these three points is the most lacking in what I see, with literally thousands of assessment bits being done for reasons OTHER than for the learning of the child. Don't believe me, think of this blog when you next do your reports... who is that for, really?

Let's start a second layer to AfL: DfL, where we make conscious decisions about what to change, add, delete of adjust in our teaching, for the benefit of our kids, based on the assessment data we have just gathered. Is it possible to say that an assessment that isn't followed by a decision is a waste of time? I'm thinking hard about this very bold statement...

Anyway, will post some more thoughts on here after the event tomorrow!

Hoping to connect with a good number of interesting folks!

BC

In the beginning there was...

This blog is a journal of my 2 year mission to look at the way we use data in our schools, and I hope to make a difference. It's early days yet, but I am fairly sure that the reason why I want to look at data use it because of a hunch that we may be doing it wrongly. I wonder how many other teachers have this feeling, but lack the depth of knowledge to be able to question the system they are presented with?

We used to have schools without computers, and because of logistics, much less data was held centrally. Now we have all the data in nicely organised, accessible media. How much better off are we as a result? Could we be better off?

I've decided to write this blog as a means for informal chat about my ideas. If you are reading this, it's because you are interested in the same issue, and I welcome your involvement.

Let's look at the facts, at least as far as I can see:-

• I have a set of class data spreadsheets containing data about the kids I teach, yet I don't know what most of the columns mean, so I ignore them. I've been ignoring them for 10 years, and I'm still judged as an outstanding teacher. On the one hand the data may be useless, especially if I have avoided any retribution. On the other hand, I could be missing the opportunity to become the country's first "super-outstanding" teacher, by using my outstanding teaching skills alongside really useful facts about my class to personalise the learning.
• We have SIMS. I feed SIMS on a regular basis with data, often hard earned through hours of marking and calculating. SIMS is like an insatiable deity, omnipresent in my school, all powerful (power cuts demonstrate this), yet this deity gives me little or nothing in return, not even a spiritual sense of well being. Surely, with all this information about kids floating around as computer code, we can do something better? If for no other reason than to make us feel like the effort of gathering the data in the first place was worth it.
• I mark my books in the same old fashioned way I have always done. This data doesn't really go beyond me. I summarise my findings into school-wide assessment regimes as dictated by the calendar. My colleagues in other subjects do the same. So, do we really have nothing to gain by sharing this low-level data? Look at literacy- kids write in my subject, I mark their literacy when I mark their homework, even though I am not an English teacher, yet the data goes nowhere near the person who coordinates school-wide literacy. Seems a shame to me.
• Here's a possibility which I can't substantiate (yet), but is there a chance we are taking too much time out of our working day with data, and neglecting other things like planning, giving feedback or, dare I say it, relaxing? 

Questions (please feel free to give me your perspective):

I need to find out how many of my colleagues also ignore the data on the class spreadsheets. Are we all ignoring it? How funny that would be if we have been hiding the same ignorance for all these years.

Is my work more about personalised learning than it is about data?

How much time are colleagues spending on data analysis?

I'll be posting again soon once I have done some of my first reading. This could all be a big dead end,  but just imagine if my hunch is right and we can get amazing progress improvements, just by using the stuff we've always had on record in a slightly better way. 

Ben