Using information and data to support and improve learning

Our approach to the use of data and information to support and improve learning

Our School Improvement guidance: framework for evaluation, improvement and accountability sets out our approach to using data and information to support and improve learning aligned with the principles of the Curriculum for Wales.

Improving learning depends on leadership, working collaboratively and sharing information openly. In this context, data and information are everyone’s responsibility and should be used continuously and embedded in a school’s improvement cycle, across local authorities and the Welsh Government.

Our expectation is that the use of data and information is proportionate and balanced: It should be impactful in driving improvements for learners. Both qualitative and quantitative data are important to gain a full and rounded picture of learners, learning and schools.

We believe that using suitable types and breadth of data and information in appropriate ways supports a system-wide focus on what matters and helps to provide a comprehensive and balanced set of information for learners, parents and carers, schools, local authorities, national government, and other partners.

We are reforming a number of aspects of our data and information requirements and expectations, gatekeeping processes and facilitating systems and tools to fully align with this approach.

We are currently consulting on some of these aspects, including a set of principles to underpin this approach and a 14 to 16 learning entitlement indicators framework.

Expectations for the use of data and information across schools and local authorities

Schools and local authorities have their own rich sources of data and information as well as information provided to them by Welsh Government. We set out in our School improvement guidance: framework for evaluation, improvement and accountability broad expectations for how schools and local authorities should use data and information to support learners and learning.

Schools and local authorities should:

• use a balanced approach that draws on a coherent and comprehensive set of qualitative and quantitative information to evaluate learners’ progress in schools in a non-hierarchical manner. This information should be relevant to individual schools’ needs and context, but there are likely to be commonalities across schools to support a shared understanding of progression and to focus schools towards national expectations
• not rely solely on narrow measures of learner attainment to draw conclusions on school performance
• ensure that school leaders, practitioners and support staff are not distracted from their work with learners to gather and retain significant quantities of evidence to satisfy different requirements

Schools should:

• use a wide range of information to consider the progress of all learners and the systems that support them, guided by the principles of progression to arrive at a holistic view of learner progression
• develop lines of enquiry for further self-evaluation and improvement planning, building on evidence collected about learner progress, as well as wider information across the breadth of school activity.
• select information used for self-evaluation dependent on their own context, needs and priorities, while aiming to carry out an objective evaluation of their current position
• consider carefully, and within context, the use of any comparative information: how it can be used to identify potential areas for investigation, and to support increased collaboration between schools and the sharing of effective practice
• make effective use of information they hold themselves for the purpose of self-evaluation, as well as using a wide range of evidence either made available to them by others or which they have sourced

Local authorities should work in partnership to:

• make available to schools any information they hold which would be beneficial for schools’ self-evaluation as part of a culture of partnership working
• share relevant information and intelligence about schools between each other, in line with GDPR legislation, reinforcing their professional partnership
• consider appropriate school-level evidence and information to:
  • help determine schools’ support needs and capacity to support others
  • contribute to their own self-evaluation of their services to support schools which should inform councils’ review of their performance at a corporate, strategic level

Welsh Government use of data and information

To give us a rounded and balanced picture of schools and learning in Wales we engage regularly across the range of our partners and use the intelligence from that dialogue alongside our qualifications data, our attendance data, our personalised assessments national report, our results from PISA and other comparator analyses, Schools Health Research Network surveys, other statistics releases, Estyn’s annual and thematic reports as well as the insight offered by the varied research available to us.

We are improving the breadth and quality of national information available about our education system and developing the ways we use this to inform our policymaking and supporting our partners.