reporting – School Reporting Suite

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UK School Assessment Reporting – No New Tests Before 2018

The UK school assessment reporting process from schools has been under review and subject to multiple changes under the current government.

This has affected all key stages and is likely to continue as consultations and reviews into effective ways of monitoring, tracking and reporting children’s progress are planned by the UK government.

This makes the challenge for key stakeholders to make sure that their own internal monitoring, tracking and reporting systems allow them to stay on top of changing regulatory requirements in line with the national curriculum and their own reporting needs.

In October the Education secretary Justine Greening announced some policy decisions in a statement to parliament. One of which was that there would be no new tests implemented before 2018.

No New Tests Before 2018

Teachers, school senior management teams, parents and children have had to adapt to a number of different changes in how pupil progress is assessed, monitored and reported on a local and national level.

Therefore, there may be some relief that there are no new tests for children in the UK education system before 2018. This is said to be designed to bring in a greater level of stability to schools over the coming 12 months.

With so many changes the reaction to this and the scrapping of key stage 1 resits (link to other blog) have been positively received by the Naswut teaching union.

Christine Keates the head of the union stating

“It appears that the Secretary of State has now recognised the real challenges around statutory end of key-stage assessment.

“The recognition that there were problems with the 2015/16 data, and that because of this no schools should face harsh sanctions solely on the basis of that data, is a welcome step towards relieving the pressure and anxiety some schools have been experiencing.”

What Schools Say About The School Reporting Suite

June 22, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Teacher Pointing at Map of World ca. 2002

An efficient and accurate way of reporting pupil progress is an important part of the UK education system. It has been something we have worked tirelessly to implement with our School Reporting Suite platform.

One of the challenges we face when talking with schools is allowing them to picture how our solution works and the benefits it can have.

We are happy to demo our system to any school that may be interested to help bridge the conceptual gap, but we thought we would share a couple of testimonials from schools that use SRS for their pupil assessment, tracking and reporting or other IT work.

Here are two examples of clients that are reaping the benefits of working with SRS.

Menorah Primary School

We have completed our first full year’s assessment schedule using SRS, using both the tracking and reporting modules. The software fully represents our assessment ethos. It is easy to deploy and data entry is very straightforward even in Hebrew! Layout is comprehensive without being cluttered and print copy is aesthetic and ready to send to parents. We now have the tools to generate full reports and charts on classes, groups and individual students in all their subjects and categories. We can track, assess, compare and plan – all within one software package.
Thank you, Aspiring Panda! Your customer service is ‘top-shelf’ with immediate and effective response to all our technical enquiries.

————– Rabbi Atlas

Wexham School

Aspiring Panda the company behind SRS have been providing a professional service for the School’s IT requirements in respect of Structured Network Cabling, installation of interactive whiteboards and AV Sound Systems. Recently, we had a need to update our website and approached Aspiring Panda for this task.

We would like to thank the Aspiring Panda team for designing our school website and was particularly impressed by their usual professional approach and the speed at which the website was prepare to meet our particular requirements. We would definitely work with them in the future and also have no hesitation in recommending Aspiring Panda to other organisations.

Accurate Reporting Of Pupil Progress Is Important In The UK Education System

April 22, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Accurate testing and reporting of pupil progress is an important part of the UK education system, however it hit the news for the wrong reasons last week as a testing scandal emerged that led to an official government trial being curtailed.

The test was of national spelling tests for 7 year olds, which is currently in the process of being rolled out across the country. But Progress has hit a speed bump after an embarrassing faux pas in the official trial.

Last week it emerged that during the trial many pupils were able to predict what questions were coming next. The children had not learnt to predict the future, but rather had seen the test paper before as it was the same as some of the practice papers they had been given access to.

Charlotte Smiles, a teacher spotted the error and said:

“One of the children who was sitting the spelling test that we were giving them kept saying, ‘I know this one, and this one’. He appeared to know what was coming next.

I went and checked on the DfE website and I found this exact test published as a sample paper.”

Knowing the answers to a test in advance is the stuff of slapstick movies, this is quite a serious error for a new process and one that has left many scratching their heads at how such a mistake could happen.

Head teachers leader Russell Hobby stated that

“We have no way of knowing how extensively it has been used by schools. This is a serious error that undermines confidence in the administration of primary tests and also means that we can have little faith in any standard setting exercise that may emerge from the pre-test trials.

What Next

The full Key Stage 1 tests are due to start later in the year but this error has given the tests a rocky start. We will be keeping an eye and monitoring how the rollout continues after this setback.

How Would Your School Handle A Digital Detox

March 25, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Digital technology has taken over our lives in recent years.

The invention of smart phones and the mobile internet and Wi-Fi infrastructure that has grown to support them means that we can be online virtually anywhere.

One generation that the digital revolution has affected the most are school age children.

There are now generations of children growing up that are digitally native, they have never lived in a world where information and communication was not at their fingertips 24/7. Children are drawn to technology from an early age and it seems to come naturally to them.

Teens in the UK, like most everywhere else in the world, are incredibly digitally literate. Smartphone adoption is sky high and by 2013, 8 out of 10 UK teens had a smart phone, using it for browsing the web, playing games and using social media.

Young people are estimated to be only for 27 hours a week and there is concern that is too much and children are becoming dependent on being connected.

Last week the BBC put together an interesting experiment to see how high school students would cope with a weeklong digital detox.

“Digital detox refers to a period of time during which a person refrains from using electronic connecting devices such as smartphones and computers. It is regarded as an opportunity to reduce stress or focus on social interaction in the physical world.”

It was insightful to see how the students use the technology and how different their experience of the world is to their parents.

All quite endearing it shows just how important digital has become in the behaviours of the next generation. This will affect how they respond to how they find and absorb information and how they communicate with each other.

Kodesh Curriculum Case Study

March 11, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

At School Reporting Suite we know that our software can handle the complexities of running a system in English and Hebrew, whilst reporting on the Kodesh and national curricula.

We know this because we have implemented it within a Jewish school in Golders Green and the results and response from the school has been phenomenal.

The Menorah Primary School Case Study

The Menorah Primary School, is an orthodox Jewis school founded in 1944 by the Golders Green Beth Hamedrash. They contacted Aspiring Panda the company that created the School Reporting Suite looking for tracking and annual reporting software for the school.

Two of the key requirements that the software were

It could be written to and edited in Hebrew
It could be fully customised to suit the subjects and grading criteria of the school’s Jewish studies curriculum

What We Did

Aspiring Panda implemented a cloud based version of the School Reporting Suite to accommodate the Jewish Study Curriculum and he school’s grading criteria.

Using the language settings of the software we allowed the system to be written to and edited in Hebrew and accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.

The Reaction Of The School

The implementation of the software went smoothly, teachers found it convenient and easy to use and the head teacher reported that time efficiencies were achieved due to standardised formatting which reduced writing and review time.

Parental feedback was also extremely positive, particularly on the professional style and quality of the reports.

Here is what the head of the school had to say after the first year of using SRS.

“We have completed our first full year’s assessment schedule using SRS, using both the tracking and reporting modules. The software fully represents our assessment ethos. It is easy to deploy and data entry is very straightforward even in Hebrew! Layout is comprehensive without being cluttered and print copy is aesthetic and ready to send to parents. We now have the tools to generate full reports and charts on classes, groups and individual students in all their subjects and categories. We can track, assess, compare and plan – all within one software package.
Thank you, Aspiring Panda! Your customer service is ‘top-shelf’ with immediate and effective response to all our technical enquiries.”

Atlas, Principal

School Assessments A Review Of 2015

January 22, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Last year saw significant changes in the way that children are assessed and how pupil progress is monitored.

The biggest shift of the last few years has been the move to stop using the levels system to measure pupil progress. These levels had been in place for a generation and their removal is a step into the unknown compared to the structure they provided.

This has put pressure on schools to make sure that they are accurately measuring pupil progress in a changing political and assessment environment.

This is something that we are working with schools to implement using our customisable assessment and reporting system to ensure that schools have the information they need to accurately monitor pupil progress.

The other significant change has been the introduction fo the new reception Baseline assessment. Although it is not yet a statutory requirement, the majority of schools have opted in.

This is primarily so they get some flexibility in how the progress of children from this measure is defined. For those that opted in pupils are measured on either the results attained or the progress made by the end of Key Stage 1.

For schools that have opted in then when they come on board pupils will solely be judged on what they have attained.

Moving forwards into 2016 we can expect to see more uncertainty and potential changes to the way achievement is monitored and reported within schools.

Already we have seen the announcement of times table testing for pupils as they leave Key Stage 1 and there will be speculation as to other yardsticks of progress the government may wish to measure across different age groups in the future.

At Aspiring Panda we will keep in line with the latest standards and ensure that those using our School Reporting Suite have the tools they need to do the job of teaching moving forward.

GCSE and A-Level Exam Remarking – The Challenges Of Assessment

January 15, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

GCSE’s and A-Levels are two of the most important measures of academic progress within the UK education system.

A pupil’s education is largely designed to help prepare them to take these standard examinations that can have a dramatic impact on the path that a pupil takes.

Good results can lead to a job or further education, whilst not hitting expectations can lead to re-sits or a longer term revaluation of future plans.

The process of administering the assessments, marking them and reporting back to the schools is a mammoth one that is administered by each of the different accredited exam boards.

Millions of tests are taken, marked and reported in a short period of time which creates a number of challenges around consistency in delivering and marking the assessments.

There are a growing number of of schools that are challenging the results received by pupils when they do not match previous performance or expectations.

With so much at stake for the pupils and schools it is only natural that when this occurs they take all reasonable steps to ensure pupils get the grades they deserve and that everyone gets equal treatment.

Ofqual, the exam watchdog, published that it received an incredible 572,000 queries over exam grades last year, an increase of 27% compared to the year before.

These queries have produced results, requests for papers to be remarked has resulted in more than 90,000 grades being changed during the last exam cycle nationally.

The sheer scale of the problem has caused the regulator to launch an inquiry to investigate why the results received by pupils on results day are so often being changed on appeal.

As a company that specialises in the assessment, monitoring and reporting of pupils in education, we will watch the progress of this investigation with interest.

The assessment and reporting of pupil exam results is a huge challenge, however it is one that needs to be gotten right.

Exhibiting at The National Jewish Education Conference For Primary School Teachers

January 8, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Next week we are proud to be exhibiting our School Reporting Suite at the National Jewish Education Conference For Primary School teachers. The event being held on the 12^th of January at the London School of Jewish studies and will be an opportunity to meet educators from across the country.

Explaining Our Unique School Reporting Suite

We are delighted to be exhibiting at the conference, as we will be able to speak with delegates and explain to them how our School Reporting Suite can support both the national and Kodesh curricula.

We will be speaking about the benefits of being to track pupil progress within both national and Kodesh curricula using just one piece of software that can be used to monitor progress and seamlessly share this with management in real time.

Our Work With The Kodesh Curricula

The School Reporting Suite is designed to be the solution for faith schools looking to use more than one language and/or curriculum. We are exhibiting as we already have experience implementing our reporting suite successfully within a Jewish school.

Our work with the Menorah Primary School has been extremely successful leading the Principal to say

Thank you, Aspiring Panda! Your customer service is ‘top-shelf’ with immediate and effective response to all our technical enquiries.”

Who We Are Looking To Meet

During the conference we are looking to talk to delegates that are looking for a more efficient and effective way of reporting information within their school.

We look forward to attending on the 12^th and hope that if you are attending you will come and ask us about the School Reporting Suite.

Overcoming The School Reporting Challenge

December 18, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

At Aspiring Panda the developers of the School Reporting Suite, we passionately believe that our reporting solution can help improve a number of different aspects of the school reporting challenge.

Our proprietary pupil assessment, tracking and reporting system is designed to overcome the challenges of even the most dynamic teaching environments that many other solutions do not.

Configured To Any Curriculum

With so many different types of schools and curriculum across the world, we have developed our system to be configured to work with any curriculum grading scheme. If there is more than one curriculum being followed, this can be done within one system rather than having to be operate two independently of each other.

We provide the schools the training and support they need to implement an easy to use system that suits their requirements.

Supports Multiple Languages

With schools particularly those that are faith based communicating in more than one language, we have developed our system to allow users to toggle between different languages with ease.

This can help schools manage multiple curriculums and communicate effectively with parents.

Custom Reporting Design

To overcome the school reporting challenge, we let schools access the information they want to see in the format that works best for their needs. This means that teachers and senior management can access the information they want to see, displayed in the way they want to see it in real time.

This increases engagement with the information and can make identifying trends and areas that require attention easier to identify.

Can Be Accessed By Teachers From Anywhere

With our cloud solution teachers can access and update their pupil reports from anywhere with an internet connection. This allows teachers to manage their time more effectively, particularly wif they are taking their marking home or getting some work done when the school is closed.

This flexibility is extremely popular with users of the School Reporting Suite.

The Six Week Summer Holiday Myth

September 16, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

We work with many different schools operating on different models and curricula and they all tell us that the most stressful and important times in the school calendar is the end of year exam and reporting period.

Thankfully this is now at an end and schools up and down the country have been coming to the end of their school year and starting the long summer break.

Yet as the children leave and the school gates are locked behind them, teachers, management and administrative staff are already thinking of next year.

Whilst we do not want to ruin the first weeks of holiday for the teachers reading, we acknowledge that whilst there is time to relax and recharge. We all know the “six week summer holiday” for teachers is a myth, some of you may even be reading this from your school or classroom as you opt to do as much as you can at the start of your holiday.

The changing curricula means that time saving planning from years gone by may need tweaking or rewriting entirely. In a rapidly changing and high pressure education system, There is planning, preparation and action to be taken to get ready for another physically and mentally demanding school year.

The ongoing pressures on teachers are something we are aware of at School Reporting System and we are working hard to ensure that where possible we can make the bit after the summer as easy to manage as possible from a reporting perspective.

We know that when implemented our solutions can save administrators and teachers alike time by making the reporting process easier and increasing the ease of performance tracking and report generation.

Giving teachers more time and less admin is our goal and in the meantime we wish the hardworking educators of Britain happy holidays.

School Reporting Suite

Saving Teachers Time