Category: Uncategorized

  • Understanding your survey data

    Many school improvement plans include measurements based on surveys of pupils, staff or parents, but do you need a response from every person to be confident in your results. Would the views of just 50% of your parents be a suitable sample? Well, as with a lot of statistics it depends on what action you

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  • Attention Scottish Primary School Headteachers

    I’ve built an Excel doc that splits pupil class lists in half for schools reopening in August, while ensuring that children are placed in the same group as any siblings in the school. I understand how time consuming this task can be for headteachers, so please contact me for a free copy for your school.

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  • Measuring “effort” during home learning

    It looks like a version of home learning is going to be around for a little while longer and I know lots of schools are surveying pupils, parents and teachers to understand how they are finding things. A measure you might not have thought about is asking them how much “effort” is involved in home

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  • “Lockdown engagement” impact on attainment

    Staying at home is feeling like the “new normal”. However I know my daughter, like lots of children is missing her friends and teachers.  We’ve been able to interact regularly with her school, but I am aware that not every child (due to lots of reasons) is so lucky. When all children are able to return

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  • I love pies, but not pie charts

    I love pies, but not pie charts

    I was watching BBC Scotland bitesize with my daughter (which we are loving!) and they were explaining “the uses” of a pie chart and I nearly turned the TV off 🙈 Pie charts can look pretty, but in terms of visually communicating information there are so many better ways. Before you produce any graph, you

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  • How confident are you in your data?

    How confident are you in your data?

    Schools seem to be flooded with data: from tests, feedback, teacher assessments…. but does all your data tell the same story.   If you had to choose two teachers within your school to assess the ability of your pupils, would each child be given the same score by the two teachers? If every child had

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  • “What gets measured gets managed”…..vs. I’m sure everything is fine (!)

    I am very blessed to have two beautiful, healthy daughters who keep me very busy! Unsurprisingly a lot of my time is focused on making sure they have everything they need (and everyone else including myself comes after). However, at a recent blood test to check how I was recovering after having my baby, it

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  • Best practice for analysing data

    Over the last 10 years I have seen many principles for analytical best practice. The five that apply regardless of the data you are looking at are, Rubbish In – Rubbish Out What gets measured gets managed The trend is your friend So what……? Insight to Action Over the next few posts I will go

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